5.25-W CW near-diffraction-limited tapered-stripe semiconductoroptical amplifier

A broad-area tapered-contact single-pass amplifier emitting at 860-nm wavelength is demonstrated to emit up to 5.25 W continuous wave (CW) in a near-diffraction-limited radiation pattern. The diffraction-limited component of the radiation pattern, comprising greater than 87% of the total power at 5.25-W CW output, is observed to decrease slightly with increasing drive current due to filament formation. The output beam astigmatism is found to saturate at high power output in accordance with gain saturation, which indicates that the high-quality output beam remains stable with respect to small changes in current or injected power