TAILORING THE BIREFRINGENCE IN A VERTICAL-CAVITY SEMICONDUCTOR-LASER

We demonstrate a technique to modify the strain in a planar vertical-c avity semiconductor laser. The technique consists of locally melting a hole in the wafer next to the device by means of a focused laser beam . This allows manipulating both the magnitude and the orientation of t he native birefringence in a permanent way. (C) 1996 American Institut e of Physics.