Reduced divergence angle of photonic crystal vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

The reduced divergence angle of the photonic crystal vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (PC-VCSEL) was investigated in both theory and experiment. The photonic crystal waveguide possessed the weakly guiding waveguide characteristic, which accounted for the reduction of the divergence angle. The three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method was used to simulate the designed PC-VCSEL, and a calculated divergence angle of 5.2° was obtained. The measured divergence angles of our fabricated PC-VCSEL were between 5.1° and 5.5° over the entire drive current range, consistent with the numerical results. This is the lowest divergence angle of the fabricated PC-VCSEL ever reported.

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