title: Anatomy of a polarization switch of a vertical-cavity semiconductor laser
abstract: Using a streak camera we have measured the three Stokes polarization parameters during a polarization switch of a vertical-cavity semiconductor laser. The switch occurs along a corkscrew path on the Poincare sphere and takes on average a few nanoseconds; this value agrees with a theoretical treatment based upon the Fokker-Planck equation.
authors.affiliation: Huygens Laboratory, Leiden University, P.O. Box 9504, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: Willemsen
authors.lastname: van Exter MP
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Woerdman