High-performance 980-nm ridge waveguide lasers with a nearly circular beam

We report high-performance 980-nm ridge waveguide quantum-well lasers with extremely low vertical beam divergence of 13/spl deg/. A very small aspect ratio of 1.6 is obtained at high operating power of 900 mW. In addition to the more circular beam, low threshold, high efficiency, high characteristic temperature, and high output power of over 1.18 W are achieved. The fiber coupled output power can be as high as 680 mW with fiber Bragg grating stabilization. Excellent wavelength and power stability are also demonstrated.