Polarization control and stabilization of VCSELs by means of optical feedback from an extremely short external cavity

This article show experimental evidences confirming the recently proposed hypothesis that isotropic and polarization sensitive optical feedback from an extremely short external cavity (ESEC) is a way to simultaneously active polarization control and stabilization in VCSELs. The experiments reported here were obtained using an oxide-confined GaAs/InGaAs quantum well VCSEL. Experimental results showing how the external mirror reflectivity affects the mapping of the polarization states as well as the effect of polarization sensitive optical feedback from an ESEC on VCSELs polarization, is presented.