The groundwork has been completed for a large new research initiative involving the development of diode lasers for moderate power ultrashort pulse generation. This thesis reports on the status of three core areas of this initiative: InGaAsP/GaAs diode laser design and characterization, split contact device testing, and thin film interference filter deposition and characterization. Two new short wavelength diode laser designs have been realized and tested. A 980 nm laser was designed, using an InGaAsP barrier/waveguide region. This showed improved far field performance and better contact isolation as compared to an existing 980 nm laser using GaAs barriers. A laser emitting at 850 nm was also designed using GaAs quantum wells surrounded by a new quaternary waveguide region. A test arrangement was developed to facilitate the measurement of IV and LI curves for split contact lasers. Numerous lasers were tested, indicating that short absorber sections and narrow gap widths are preferable for use as saturable absorbing regions in a passively mode locked diode laser. Finally, thin film silicon oxynitride interference filters have been designed, deposited, and characterized for several antireflecting and high reflectance coatings on semiconductor laser facets. A comparison ofsingle layer AR coatings accounting for the modal reflectivity was performed. A four layer high reflectance coating with a peak broadband reflectance of over 90% was deposited on a laser facet. / Thesis / Master of Engineering (ME)

In this thesis, novel multi-section laser diodes based on quantum-dot material are designed and investigated which exhibit a number of advantages such as low threshold current density; temperature-insensitivity and suppress carrier diffusion due to discrete nature of density of state of quantum-dots. The spectral versatility in the range of 1.1 µm – 1.3 µm wavelengths is demonstrated through novel mode-locking regimes such as dual-wavelength mode-locking, wavelength bistability and broad tunability. Moreover, broad pulse repetition rate tuning using an external cavity configuration is presented. A high peak power of 17.7 W was generated from the quantum-dot laser as a result of the tapered geometry of the gain section of the laser has led to successful application of such device for two-photon imaging. Dual-wavelength mode-locking is demonstrated via ground (?=1180 nm) and excited (?=1263 nm) spectral bands with optical pulses from both states simultaneously in the 5-layer quantum-dot two-section diode laser. The widest spectral separation of 83 nm between the modes was achieved in a dual-wavelength mode-locked non-vibronic laser. Power and wavelength bistability are achieved in a mode-locked multi-section laser which active region incorporates non-identical QD layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. As a result the wavelength can be electronically controlled between 1245 nm and 1290 nm by applying different voltages to the saturable absorber. Mode-locked or continuous-wave regimes are observed for both wavelengths over a 260 mA – 330 mA current ranges with average power up to 28 mW and 31 mW, respectively. In mode-locked regime, a repetition rate of 10 GHz of optical pulses as short as 4 ps is observed. Noticeable hysteresis of average power for different bias conditions is also demonstrated. The wavelength and power bistability in QD lasers are potentially suitable for flip-flop memory application. In addition, a unique mode-locked regime at expense of the reverse bias with 50 nm wavelength tuning range from 1245 nm to 1290 nm is also presented. Broad repetition rate tunability is shown from quantum-dot external cavity mode-locked 1.27 µm laser. The repetition rate from record low of 191 MHz to 1 GHz from fundamental mode-locking was achieved. Harmonic mode-locking allows further to increase tuning up to 6.8 GHz (34th-order harmonic) from 200 MHz fundamental mode-locking. High peak power of 1.5 W can be generated directly from two-section 4 mm long laser with bent waveguide at angle of 7° at 1.14 GHz repetition rate without the use of any pulse compression and optical amplifier. Stable mode-locking with an average power up to 60 mW, corresponding to 25 pJ pulse energy is also obtained at a repetition frequency of 2.4 GHz. The minimum time-bandwidth product of 1.01 is obtained with the pulse duration of 8.4 ps. Novel tapered quantum-dot lasers with a gain-guided geometry operating in a passively mode-locked regime have been investigated, using structures that incorporated either 5 or 10 quantum dot layers. The peak power of 3.6 W is achieved with pulse duration of 3.2 ps. Furthermore, the record peak power of 17.7 W and transform limited pulses of 672 fs were achieved with optimized structure. The generation of picosecond pulses with high average power of up to 209 mW was demonstrated, corresponding to 14.2 pJ pulse energy. The improved optical parameters of the tapered laser enable to achieve nonlinear images of fluorescent beads. Thus it is for the first time that QD based compact monolithic device enables to image biological samples using two-photon microscopy imaging technique.