It is shown that the well‐known damped relaxation oscillation resonance in the small signal equations for the dynamic photon and carrier densities becomes more highly damped when the photon density is axially inhomogeneous. An antireflective coating withR=0.02 on one laser facet reduced the resonance in the light output from a 1.3‐&mgr;m Vee‐groove laser yielding a flat response with a 3‐dB bandwidth of 5 GHz. We also show that the wavelength modulation or chirp, due to the carrier‐dependent contribution of the refractive index, is largely eliminated.