Effect of temperature on self-pulsation in narrow stripe, gain-guided, compact disk laser diodes

Summary form only given. There is an ongoing strong interest in the development of red self-pulsating lasers for data storage compact disk (CD) applications. Of particular importance in this mass-market application is that the laser diode emission exhibits strong self-pulsation over an extended temperature range (0-80/spl deg/C), since control of the device temperature is mitigated by the low costs required for this application. It is widely believed that carrier transport and recombination play a significant role in the temperature dependence of the self-pulsation, since self-pulsation in these CD laser structures arises from a delicate interplay between the spatially nonuniform inversion of the semiconductor material and the photons circulating in the laser cavity. This interplay, however, is not well understood. In order to gain some insight on the self-pulsation process in CD gain-guided devices we have examined the temperature dependence of self-pulsation in commercial CD lasers emitting at /spl lambda/=800 nm, which are used in current storage applications. Since these devices reliably self-pulsate over the range 0-80/spl deg/C, we have examined their behavior from cryogenic temperatures (77 K) to above room temperature (310 K).