Electrically-pumped, broad-area, single-mode photonic crystal lasers.
Planar broad-area single-mode lasers, with modal widths of the order of tens of microns, are technologically important for high-power applications and improved coupling efficiency into optical fibers. They may also find new areas of applications in on-chip integration with devices that are of similar size scales, such as for spectroscopy in microfluidic chambers or optical signal processing with micro-electromechanical systems. An outstanding challenge is that broad-area lasers often require external means of control, such as injection-locking or a frequency/spatial filter to obtain single-mode operation. In this paper, we propose and demonstrate effective index-guided, large-area, edge-emitting photonic crystal lasers driven by pulsed electrical current injection at the optical telecommunication wavelength of 1550 nm. By suitable design of the photonic crystal lattice, our lasers operate in a single mode with a 1/e(2) modal width of 25 microm and a length of 600 microm.
Zhu
Lin
L
Department of Electrical Engineering and Department of Applied Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. linz@caltech.edu
Chak
Philip
P
Poon
Joyce K S
JK
DeRose
Guy A
GA
Yariv
Amnon
A
Scherer
Axel
A