High-Speed Modulation of Index-Guided Implant-Confined Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

An etched photonic crystal (PhC) or holey wedge structure induces index confinement into 850-nm implant-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) to engineer the spatial overlap between the optical mode and laser gain for improved high-speed operation and reduced relative intensity noise. Large-signal operation of 12.5 Gb/s is achieved with a single transverse-mode PhC VCSEL and 15 Gb/s with a single transverse-mode holey VCSEL. An excessive current diffusion effect is found when the difference between the electrical and optical diameter is large (>4 mum), which limits the large-signal modulation of single-mode VCSELs. The design rules for optimal single transverse-mode high-speed PhC and holey VCSELs are extracted from a parametric study of their large-signal modulation characteristics.

[1]  D. Kuchta,et al.  30 Gb/s Directly Modulated 850 nm Datacom VCSELs , 2008 .

[2]  Klaus Petermann,et al.  Noise performance of multimode VCSELs , 2001 .

[3]  P. Leisher,et al.  Loss and index guiding in single-mode holey vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers , 2006, 2006 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and 2006 Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference.

[4]  A. N. Al-Omari,et al.  VCSELs with a self-aligned contact and copper-plated heatsink , 2005, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[5]  Kam Y. Lau,et al.  Relative intensity noise of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers , 1993 .

[6]  Friedhelm Hopfer,et al.  Single-mode submonolayer quantum-dot vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with high modulation bandwidth , 2006 .

[7]  A. N. Al-Omari,et al.  Polyimide-planarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers with 17.0-GHz bandwidth , 2004, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[8]  T. Anan,et al.  High-speed 1.1-μm-range InGaAs VCSELs , 2008, OFC/NFOEC 2008 - 2008 Conference on Optical Fiber Communication/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference.

[9]  P. Leisher,et al.  Parametric Study of Proton-Implanted Photonic Crystal Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers , 2007, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[10]  Chen Chen,et al.  High Modulation Bandwidth Implant-Confined Photonic Crystal Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers , 2007, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[11]  Kent D. Choquette,et al.  Two-dimensional photonic crystal confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers , 2003 .

[12]  Brian Thibeault,et al.  Improved performance of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diodes with Au-plated heat spreading layer , 1995 .

[13]  C. S. Wang,et al.  High-efficiency, high-speed VCSELs with 35 Gbit=s error-free operation , 2007 .

[14]  K. Petermann.  Laser Diode Modulation and Noise , 1988 .