Publications

The authors have developed electrically-injected coupled-resonator vertical-cavity lasers and have studied their novel properties. These monolithically grown coupled-cavity structures have been fabricated with either one active and one passive cavity or with two active cavities. All devices use a selectively oxidized current aperture in the lower cavity, while a proton implant was used in the active-active structures to confine current in the top active cavity. They have demonstrated optical modulation from active-passive devices where the modulation arises from dynamic changes in the coupling between the active and passive cavities. The laser intensity can be modulated by either forward or reverse biasing the passive cavity. They have also observed Q-switched pulses from active-passive devices with pulses as short as 150 ps. A rate equation approach is used to model the Q-switched operation yielding good agreement between the experimental and theoretical pulseshape. They have designed and demonstrated the operation of active-active devices which la.se simultaneously at both longitudinal cavity resonances. Extremely large bistable regions have also been observed in the light-current curves for active-active coupled resonator devices. This bistability can be used for high contrast switching with contrast ratios as high as 100:1. Coupled-resonator vertical-cavity lasers have shown enhanced mode selectivity which has allowed devices to lase with fundamental-mode output powers as high as 5.2 mW.

The authors report Q-switched operation from an electrically-injected monolithic coupled-resonator structure which consists of an active cavity with InGaAs quantum wells optically coupled to a passive cavity. The passive cavity contains a bulk GaAs region which is reverse-biased to provide variable absorption at the lasing wavelength of 990 nm. Cavity coupling is utilized to effect large changes in output intensity with only very small changes in passive cavity absorption. The device is shown to produce pulses as short as 150 ps at repetition rates as high 4 GHz. A rate equation approach is used to model the Q-switched operation yielding good agreement between the experimental and theoretical pulse shape. Small-signal frequency response measurements also show a transition from a slower ({approximately} 300 MHZ) forward-biased modulation regime to a faster ({approximately} 2 GHz) modulation regime under reverse-bias operation.

We report the operation of an electrically injected monolithic coupled resonator vertical cavity laser which consists of an active cavity containing In{sub x}Ga{sub 1{minus}x}As quantum wells optically coupled to a passive GaAs cavity. This device demonstrates novel modulation characteristics arising from dynamic changes in the coupling between the active and passive cavities. A composite mode theory is used to model the output modulation of the coupled resonator vertical cavity laser. It is shown that the laser intensity can be modulated by either forward or reverse biasing the passive cavity. Under forward biasing, the modulation is due to carrier induced changes in the refractive index, while for reverse bias operation the modulation is caused by field dependent cavity enhanced absorption.

The carrier lifetime in vertical cavity surface emitting lasers is determined for various oxide aperture sizes using turn-on delay measurements. The lifetime is relatively constant for large devices, but decreases for aperture sizes below 9 x 9 µm.