Title :
Modal reflection of quarter-wave mirrors in vertical-cavity lasers
Author :
Babic, Dubravko I. ; Chung, Youngchul ; Dagli, Nadir ; Bowers, John E.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Electr. & Comput., Eng., California Univ., Santa Barbara, CA, USA
fDate :
6/1/1993 12:00:00 AM
Abstract :
Very high plane-wave reflection coefficients can be obtained with practical semiconductor quarter-wave mirrors, but for beams of finite width, the reflection coefficient of a mirror with no lateral guiding and hence the finesse of cavities that use such structures will be limited by diffraction loss. The authors analytically and numerically study the modal reflection of practical semiconductor quarter-wave mirrors. They introduce a quantity called the diffraction range of a quarter-wave mirror as a means of exact analytical comparison between infinite lossless mirrors (and approximate comparison for finite mirrors) in the Fresnel diffraction limit. The exact modal reflection coefficient for an arbitrary incident mode pattern is determined by vector plane-wave decomposition. The modal reflection coefficients of two representative semiconductor quarter-wave mirrors used in vertical cavity laser technology, AlAs/GaAs and InGaAsP/InP, are studied
Keywords :
III-V semiconductors; aluminium compounds; gallium arsenide; indium compounds; laser accessories; laser cavity resonators; mirrors; semiconductor lasers; AlAs-GaAs; Fresnel diffraction limit; InGaAsP-InP; VCSEL; diffraction loss; diffraction range; finite width beams; infinite lossless mirrors; modal reflection; mode pattern; plane-wave reflection coefficients; quarter-wave mirrors; semiconductors; vector plane-wave decomposition; vertical-cavity lasers; Diffraction; Fresnel reflection; Gallium arsenide; Indium phosphide; Laser beams; Laser modes; Mirrors; Optical reflection; Semiconductor lasers; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers;
Journal_Title :
Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of
