To provide a semiconductor light-emitting element capable of efficiently radiating heat and obtaining high reliability by relaxing a thermal stress, and to provide a light-emitting apparatus employing the same.

A stress relaxation layer 71 made of a material containing indium (In) is provided on a p-side electrode layer 70. With this configuration, the thermal stress generated in junction between a semiconductor laser array 20 and a base 10 can be absorbed and relaxed by elastic deformation by the stress relaxation layer 71 to improve reliability and efficiently execute heat radiation. The stress relaxation layer 71 is configured of an indium (In)-silver (Ag) alloy or indium (In). The upper and lower sides of the stress relaxation layer 71 are sandwiched by an alloying prevention layer 72 which is completely unalloyable with indium (In), e.g., aluminum (Al), thereby preventing the indium (In) contained in the stress relaxation layer 71 from reacting with a gold (Au) layer 77 or platinum (Pt) layers 74, 76 on the p-side electrode 70 to from an alloy.