Practical approach to design and fabrication of antireflection coatings for semiconductor optical amplifiers

We have used a combination of experimental techniques and a numerical method based on a waveguide model to demonstrate low-modal reflectivity antireflection coatings on semiconductor lasers. Our approach does not require a detailed knowledge of the laser layer structure. We have modeled the experimental spectral reflectivities for single- and two-layer antireflection coatings using this approach. This is the first time that a detailed comparison between theory and experiment has been made for two-layer antireflection coatings.