ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a didactic overview of how the main beam characteristics of high-brightness tapered lasers can be accounted by simulation approaches with specific detail devoted to the simulation tool, and provides illustrative examples representative of some of the most typical behaviors of the simulated devices. In comparison with other semiconductor lasers, the specific design of tapered lasers leads to an optical beam with strong astigmatism. Quasi-3D model solves self-consistently the complete steady-state electrical, thermal, and optical equations for the tapered laser, assuming single-frequency operation. It presents a brief description of simulation model and procedure to calibrate the model in comparison with experimental results. Calibration process includes three steps, the first one at theoretical level, the second one by comparing with experimental results in BA lasers, and the third one by comparing with results in tapered lasers. The epitaxial structure of the simulated devices corresponds to that of the 1060 nm GG tapered lasers reported in Ruiz et al.
