Loss-induced confinement in photonic crystal vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

It was demonstrated in this paper that loss can have a significant role in the modal characteristics of etched photonic crystal vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) and, in fact, can be a primary mechanism of maintaining single-mode operation. Comparisons of calculated modal losses with mode splitting, etch depth, slope efficiency, and single- or multi-mode operation serve to verify the model. This work demonstrates that loss is a non-negligible effect in analyzing photonic crystal VCSELs, and this theory can serve to aid in the design of single-mode photonic crystal VCSELs.