Tilt loss in wavelength tunable micromechanical vertical cavity lasers

Author

Li, M.Y. ; Chang-Hasnain, C.J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

fYear

1999

fDate

28-28 May 1999

Firstpage

457

Lastpage

458

Abstract

Summary form only given. Wavelength tunable vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) have many applications in compact instrumentation and WDM communications. 31.6 nm of continuous tuning has been demonstrated by a micromechanical tunable VCSEL with a movable cantilever. Because the VCSEL´s top mirror is embedded into this movable cantilever, tilt is introduced to this top distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) as the lasing wavelength is tuned. A frequently asked question is the effect of this tilted DBR on the optical mode in such a VCSEL structure. In the paper, we address this question with a numerical approach and show that for devices with diameters of 5 /spl mu/m or less, tilt loss does not dominate modal optical loss in our tunable structure.

Keywords

distributed Bragg reflector lasers; laser ablation; laser beams; laser mirrors; laser modes; laser tuning; microcavity lasers; micromechanical resonators; numerical analysis; optical losses; optical transmitters; surface emitting lasers; wavelength division multiplexing; VCSEL structure; WDM communications; compact instrumentation; continuous tuning; lasing wavelength; micromechanical tunable VCSEL; modal optical loss; movable cantilever; numerical approach; optical mode; tilt loss; top distributed Bragg reflector; tunable structure; wavelength tunable micromechanical vertical cavity lasers; wavelength tunable vertical cavity surface emitting lasers; Distributed Bragg reflectors; Instruments; Laser tuning; Micromechanical devices; Optical losses; Optical surface waves; Surface emitting lasers; Surface waves; Tunable circuits and devices; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 1999. CLEO '99. Summaries of Papers Presented at the Conference on

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MD, USA

Print_ISBN

1-55752-595-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEO.1999.834441

Filename

834441