Time resolved measurement of longitudinal mode competition in 405 nm (Al,In)GaN laser diodes

Abstract

We investigate the spectral and temporal behavior of conventional narrow ridge (Al,In)GaN laser diodes (LDs) emitting at a wavelength of about 405 nm, grown on low dislocation density GaN substrate. In time resolved measurements of the lasing spectra we find a quasi-periodic hopping among several longitudinal modes, which leads to time-averaged multimode-like output spectra. The experimental data are compared to a multimode rate equation model that was adapted to the (Al,In)GaN material system. While mode hopping is well studied for other material systems, we investigate whether this mechanism is identical in blue (Al,In)GaN LDs (© 2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)