Double‐heterostructure (GaAl)As&sngbnd;GaAs injection lasers have been made with very narrow active regions in the range 0.11–0.14 &mgr;m. In addition to giving narrow angular beam widths down to 16°, they show high peak power handling capacity up to 40‐W/mm junction width at threshold current densities of less than 1500 A/cm2. The results are consistent with the relatively wide near‐field distribution perpendicular to the junction plane, which is deduced from the properties of the heterostructure optical waveguide.