TOPICS IN GUIDED-WAVE OPTICS: SINGLE-WAVELENGTH ETCHED-COUPLED-CAVITY INDIUM-GALLIUM - ARSENIDE PHOSPHORUS/INDIUM PHOSPHORUS SEMICONDUCTOR LASERS EMITTING AT 1.3 MICRONS, HIGH POWER SEMICONDUCTOR LASER ARRAYS AND CROSS-TALK PROBLEMS IN OPTICAL DIRECTIONA

The long-wavelength InGaAsP/InP lasers are the emitters for the new generation of fiber-optic systems. The growth of InP and InGaAsP layers on InP substrates using liquid phase epitaxy is described in Chapter 1. Methods to prevent thermal damage to the substrate are discussed. The X-ray diffraction is used to monitor the lattice mismatch between the substrate and the grown layers. The surface morphology of the grown layers under various conditions are emphasized.;Chapter 3 deals with high power semiconductor laser arrays. There are mainly 3 parts in this chapter: the effect of mirror imperfections on the behavior (especially the far field radiation patterns) of the laser arrays, the spatial hole burning problem in the array, and a new laser array, the symmetric coupled laser arrays (SCLA). It is shown that both mirror imperfections and spatial hole burning cause broadening in the far field pattern. The SCLA is analyzed and shown to have very strong mode selectivity which enables the oscillation of only one supermode.;The cross-talk problems in optical directional couplers are the subject of Chapter 4. Both two-waveguide couplers and three-waveguide couplers are studied. They both have cross talk proportional to the square of the overlap integral of the fields of two neighboring waveguides. A method to eliminate cross talk in 2-guide couplers is proposed.;In Chapter 2, the fabrication of a new kind of coupled-cavity lasers, the etched-coupled-cavity (ECC) lasers, is described. The performance of the ECC lasers is discussed. The ECC lasers operate in a single longitudinal mode with a side-mode suppression ratio of 200:1. The mode remains locked over a temperature range of 36(DEGREES)C. The mode selection mechanism of the ECC lasers are analyzed theoretically. An optimum design of the ECC laser is proposed.