Beam quality enhancement of broad-area semiconductor lasers achieved through lateral and longitudinal current modulation

Recent studies have explored simultaneous transverse and longitudinal modulation of gain and refractive index to improve the beam quality of broad-area semiconductor lasers, which are typically affected by filamentation and broadened far-field profiles. In this work, we propose a combined lateral and longitudinal structuring of the electrode and analyze the resulting beam quality using a comprehensive numerical model. This model captures the temporal and longitudinal evolution of the transverse distributions of both the optical field and carrier density. Within this framework, we demonstrate that appropriately engineered transverse and longitudinal electrode modulation can suppress the far-field side peaks that usually arise when only transverse modulation is applied, while preserving the stability of near-field profiles with respect to current density.