Spatial hole burning and self-focusing in vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diodes

We measure spatial hole burning in weakly index guided vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diodes (VCSELs) by spatially and spectrally resolving the spontaneous emission near field above threshold and show that spatial holes produce a significant lensing effect. We demonstrate experimentally, and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics letters 1994-01, Vol.64 (5), p.542-544
Main Authors: Wilson, G. C., Kuchta, D. M., Walker, J. D., Smith, J. S.
Format: Article
Language:English
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Summary:We measure spatial hole burning in weakly index guided vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diodes (VCSELs) by spatially and spectrally resolving the spontaneous emission near field above threshold and show that spatial holes produce a significant lensing effect. We demonstrate experimentally, and with a simple model, that in weakly index guided VCSELs, self-focusing causes the fundamental mode width to decrease with increasing output power, exacerbating the spatial hole burning problem and inducing a transition to multimode operation at relatively low powers.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.111097