Computer model of a superluminescent LED with lateral confinement

We present a computer simulation of a strip-geometry superluminescent light emitting diode (SLD). One end of the strip waveguide has a finite reflectivity while the reflectivity vanishes at the other end because it is assumed that the strip waveguide terminates in a high-loss region. The gain of the structure is computed from the drive current and several intrinsic device parameters; gain saturation is taken into account. We discuss the dependence of the light power coupled into a fiber from an InGaAsP SLD at 1.3 μm as a function of the driving current, the reflectivity of one end of the strip waveguide, its numerical aperture (NA), and its length and width. A considerable improvement in power coupling efficiency can be realized when the waveguide NA equals the fiber NA or, in the absence of lateral confinement, when the fiber NA is much larger than the half-width to length ratio (times the refractive index) of the strip waveguide. Previous analyses have ignored lateral waveguiding effects.