| Semiconductor lasers have been used as a highly efficient, coherent source of light for commercial, industrial, and medical applications. Recently, much work has been done to engineer optical devices with a high degree of functionality. Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) achieve technology's twin goals of miniaturization and integration by implementing multiple optical functions on a single chip.;This dissertation shows that asymmetric cladding surface-etched distributed Bragg reflector (ACSE-DBR) lasers are ideal candidates for monolithic photonic integration for the purpose of optical heterodyning. The active laser devices in these ACSE-DBR lasers exhibit high quantum efficiencies, tunable performance, and narrow spectral linewidths. The asymmetric cladding ridge waveguides are shown to provide low-loss routing structures, enabling monolithic integration of active and passive devices with a small layout footprint. This technology is applied to two specific purposes: a dual wavelength source for generating terahertz radiation via optical heterodyning, and high-power DBR laser arrays for spectral beam combining.;A dual-wavelength PIC at 850 nm for the purpose of optical heterodyning is presented in this work. The engineering of the active and passive structures is extensively analyzed. These structures are shown to be ideally suited for high pulsed-power optical heterodyning applications.;A high-power DBR laser array is also presented for use in spectral beam combining systems. The laser structure for this application is engineered for high-power applications. The engineering of the lateral optical guiding structure as well as the surface-etched grating is discussed. |
