Anomalous temporal response of gain guided surface emitting lasers

Under pulsed operation, gain guided surface emitting lasers have exhibited long delay times and higher threshold current than for CW operation. This phenomenon is explained by assuming that adiabatic heating of the active region results in time evolution of the transverse mode guiding. The authors´ theory suggests that a built in index guiding greater than 10^-2 will stabilise the fundamental mode and improve the temporal performance of surface emitting lasers.