Modeling the interplay of thermal effects and transverse mode behavior in native-oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

T. Rössler, R. A. Indik, G. K. Harkness, J. V. Moloney, and C. Z. Ning
Phys. Rev. A 58, 3279 – Published 1 October 1998
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Abstract

We present a microscopically based vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) model that treats plasma and lattice heating self-consistently and includes gain dispersion in a fashion facilitating the incorporation of many-body effects. This model is used to investigate the interplay of thermal effects and transverse mode behavior observed in recent experiments with large-aperture selectively oxidized VCSELs. We confirm that the highly divergent single-mode emission seen experimentally at low ambient temperatures may be caused by a redshift of the cavity resonance frequency relative to the quantum-well gain peak. Moreover, due to the dependence of the gain spectrum on temperature our model qualitatively reproduces the measured increase of the dominant spatial scale of the low-temperature steady-state field patterns with pumping. Finally, we demonstrate that spatial hole burning plays a significant role at larger ambient temperatures and explains the decrease of the spatial wavelength with pumping, in agreement with the experiments.

  • Received 9 April 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.58.3279

©1998 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

T. Rössler, R. A. Indik, G. K. Harkness*, and J. V. Moloney

  • Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721

C. Z. Ning

  • NASA Ames Research Center, T27A-1, Moffett Field, California 94035-1000

  • *Present address: Department of Physics and Applied Physics, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow G4 0NG, Scotland.

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Vol. 58, Iss. 4 — October 1998

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