2-W High-Efficiency Ridge-Waveguide Lasers With Single Transverse Mode and Low Vertical Divergence

We report recent developments on 980-nm single-transverse-mode ridge-waveguide (RW) lasers with high efficiency and low-vertical divergence. RW lasers fabricated with 7-μm-wide ridge and 3-mm-long cavity achieve 2-W optical power, 59% maximum power conversion efficiency, as well as a beam divergence of 7.2° in lateral and 10.3° in vertical under 1.5-A injection current. The lateral beam quality factors M
²
are below 1.7 up to 2-W output power.