SELF-CONSISTENT CALCULATION OF THE LASING EIGENMODE OF THE DIELECTRICALLY APERTURED FABRY-PEROT MICROCAVITY WITH IDEALIZED OR DISTRIBUTED BRAGG REFLECTORS

Optical confinement in the dielectrically apertured Fabry-Perot microc avity is investigated theoretically, The apertured region is first tre ated as embedded in an idealized planar waveguide to show that the con fined eigenmode's resonant frequency can cut off parasitic waveguide m odes existing outside the aperture, and lead to three-dimensional opti cal confinement, For more realistic cavities with nonunity mirror refl ectivities, self-consistent calculations of the eigenmode characterist ics are performed for the limit of an optically thin aperture to deriv e the lowest order confined eigenmode frequency, threshold susceptibil ity, and mode profile, The analysis is then extended to treat dielectr ic cavities based on Bragg reflectors.