Polarization resolved intensity noise in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

We report explicit analytical and numerical results for the polarization resolved intensity noise of verticalcavity surface-emitting lasers operating in the fundamental transverse mode. We describe the fluctuations of the linear and circular polarization components of linearly polarized states on both sides of a nonthermal polarization switching. Our description is valid for small and large birefringence and arbitrary values of the spin flip rate, giving a complete description of the role of these parameters. Normalized cross-correlation functions for both linear and circular components are discussed in detail. They show different degrees of anticorrelated fluctuations in different frequency ranges.