Effects of the injection current profile shape on sidelobes in large-aperture semiconductor laser amplifiers.

Sharply peaked near-field sidelobes are formed when the input optical field pattern interacts with the edges of the current stripe in a semiconductor laser amplifier. The strength of this interaction is shown theoretically to depend principally on the first and second derivatives of the transverse current profile, and hence one can suppress the sidelobes by smoothing the sharp edges in the current injection.