NUMERICAL-SIMULATION OF VERTICAL-CAVITY SURFACE-EMITTING LASERS

The semiconductor laser simulator MINILASE is being extended to simula te vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs). The electronic sy stem analysis for VCSELs is identical to that for edge emitting lasers . A brief discussion of the capabilities of MINILASE in this domain wi ll be presented. In order to simulate VCSELs, the optical mode solver in MINILASE must be extended to handle the reduced index guiding and s ignificant gain guiding typical of many VCSEL structures. A new approa ch to solving the optical problem which employs active cavity modes ra ther than the standard passive cavity modes is developed. This new app roach results in an integral eigenvalue equation in required gain ampl itudes and corresponding modal fields. Sample results from an early im plementation of a gain eigenvalue solver are shown to clarify the poss ibilities of this approach. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.