NOVEL DESIGN OF A HYBRID-CAVITY SURFACE-EMITTING LASER

A new type of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is propos ed and analyzed to show the possibility of optical pumping from an int egrated edge-emitting laser, With this scheme, it may be possible to m ake VCSEL's of very small dimensions and VCSEL arrays. The laser desig n utilizes dopant induced intermixing of quantum wells (QW's) to provi de different gain regions for the surface and edge-emitting sections, The multimode rate equations are used to evaluate the possibility of s uch a laser and the roles of the various design parameters are discuss ed. It is seen that efficient surface photon emission is possible for high vertical-cavity mirror reflectivities and sufficient separation o f bandgap energies for the two QW gain regions.