Injection locking of individual broad-area lasers in an integrated high-power diode array

We report experimental results on the injection locking of individual multimode broad-area high-power laser (one-in-a-time) in a linear array bar consisting of 19 lasers driven by a common current source. Each broad-area laser, capable of generating a beam with a power of 1 W, is injection locked to a single-longitudinal and transverse mode with less than 0.5 mW of injection power. The injection-locked broad-area laser shows very narrow linewidth close to the injection laser regardless of the output power. Our research suggests that the matching of the injection wavelength to one of the free-running modes of lasers in the array is the essential condition for achieving coherent operation of the array via injection locking. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.