Creating semiconductor lasers

Lasers are often considered to be highly directional light sources: their beams are able to propagate over long distances without substantial spreading. This, however, is not always the case. Semiconductor lasers, the most commonly used among all lasers, suffer from a large beam divergence. Such divergence is governed by the principle of diffraction, which predicts bending and spreading of light around small obstacles or apertures. Light beams endure strong diffraction when emerging from the small light-emitting regions of semiconductor lasers (the dimensions of which are comparable to the laser wavelength). This leads to a beam divergence angle of tens of degrees for most semiconductor lasers. read more

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