Temperature Dependence of the Second Harmonic Distortion of Buried Heterostructure Distributed Feedback Lasers.

We report the measurements of second harmonic distortion at different temperatures for distributed feedback single wavelength lasers. The lasers are of the capped mesa buried heterostructure (CMBH) type and emit in a single wavelength near l.3microns. The results show that the lasers generate different levels of harmonic distortion at different temperatures and the d. c. bias level for the null point varies slightly as the operating temperature is varied. This behavior offers the possibility of minimizing the harmonic distortion by adjusting the laser temperature in a practical application. We also find that a laser operating at a high temperature where it is likely to have a larger leakage current than at low temperatures does not necessarily generate a larger second harmonic distortion.