Bistable injection lasers

Semiconductor lasers with inhomogeneous current injection have been proposed nearly twenty years ago [1] as highly compact and efficient bistable devices. Recently, we demonstrated that a semiconductor laser with a segmented contact, as shown in Fig. 1, displays bistability without pulsations. The key to the proper design of such a bistable laser is the electrical isolation between the two segments which requires that the parasitic resistance (R_p in Fig. 2) between the two contacts be as large as possible. This can be achieved by doping the top cladding layer only slightly p-type.