Role of cladding-layer nonlinearity in controlling filamentation in broad-area semiconductor lasers and amplifiers

Summary form only given. We have proposed that a cladding-layer nonlinearity has the potential of decreasing the deleterious effects of gain saturation (which leads to lateral mode filamentation), thereby making it possible to realize stable broad-area semiconductor lasers. To demonstrate the beneficial effects of cladding-layer nonlinearities as simply as possible, we consider an AlGaAs broad-area semiconductor laser, operating continuously at a constant current, and iteratively solve for the intracavity fields while including diffraction, carrier diffusion, spatial hole burning, and self-defocusing.