Analysis of excitation of higher-order transverse modes in large-size oxide-confined VCSELs

In the present paper, the comprehensive self-consistent VCSEL physical model is used to analyse excitation of successive transverse cavity modes in oxide-confined (OC) vertical-cavity surface-emitting diode lasers (VCSELs) using the double intra-cavity-contacted 5-λ-cavity double-quantum-well GaAs-based GaInNAs/GaAs OC VCSEL emitting the 1.3-µm radiation as a typical VCSEL example. As expected, many inter-related physical phenomena occurring within a VCSEL volume have an impact on the mode excitation, e.g. the current spreading between both annular contacts and the central active region, the carrier injection into the active region and radial diffusion within it, creation of optical standing waves within the VCSEL cavity, the heat-flux generation and extraction, creation of the active-region gain profiles, the radial wave-guiding mechanism, penetration passive areas by the mode optical field, spatial hole-burning effect etc. Therefore, for any VCSEL design, an analysis of its mode selectivity requires the fully self-consistent comprehensive simulation of all the above important phenomena together with numerous important interactions between individual physical processes, as it has been done in the present paper. Over-simplified theoretical models may lead to faulty results.