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

Volume

29

Issue

6

fYear

1993

fDate

6/1/1993 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1950

Lastpage

1962

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;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.234458

Filename

234458