We report a repetition frequency tunable, passively mode-locked vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting semiconductor laser (VECSEL) with continuous repetition frequency tuning between 2.78 and 7.87 GHz using mechanical tuning of the laser cavity length. The laser emits near-transform-limited, sub-500-fs pulses over almost an octave tuning range between 2.78 and 5 GHz. At repetition rates abo...

We report on a solid-state laser structure functioning as the organic counterpart of a vertical external-cavity surface-emitting laser (VECSEL) design. The gain medium is a poly(methyl methacrylate) film doped with Rhodamine 640, spin casted onto the high-reflectivity mirror of a plano-concave resonator. Upon pumping by 7 ns pulses at 532 nm, a diffraction-limited beam (M(2)=1) was obtained, wi...

The authors present the design and performance of a low threshold selectively oxidized Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) fabricated for operation at a wavelength of 1.55μm. The device is based on III-V quaternary semiconductor alloys and is grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy technique. The theoretical investigation of the optical properties of the compound semiconductor alloys allows ...

The control of lateral mode operation using a photonic crystal in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser ~VCSEL! is analyzed and confirmed experimentally. By controlling design parameters of the photonic crystal pattern, we have produced photonic crystal VCSELs that operate in higher order defect modes in addition to the fundamental defect mode. The transverse modal behavior is consistent wit...

Emerging photonics technologies will be critical for next generation high performance spacecraft which may include sensor applications generating unprecedented amounts of data. For example, future high resolution multi-wavelength sensor systems will require intensive data transfer and routing on-board satellites. Optical based data busses will have higher performance (e.g. bandwidth, size, etc....

In this article, we report on the simulation and realization of a magnetic circuit allowing to apply an axial magnetic field higher than 1 Tesla. The proposed electromagnet is used to investigate the influence of a magnetic field on the polarization behavior of a vertical-cavity-surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). A nonlinear polarization behavior can be experimentally observed for currents as low ...

We report the onset of wave chaos in a real-world vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. In a joint experimental and modeling approach we demonstrate that a small deformation in one layer of the complicated laser structure changes the emission properties qualitatively. Based on the analysis of the spatial emission profiles and spectral eigenvalue spacing distributions, we attribute these chang...

We demonstrate a method for maintaining the maximum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the signal obtained from the self-mixing sensor based on a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). It was found that the locus of the maximum SNR in the current-temperature space can be well approximated by a simple analytical model related to the temperature behavior of the VCSEL threshold current. The o...

Previously reported simulations have suggested that depositing thin layers of metal over the surface of a single-mode, etched air hole photonic crystal (PhC) vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) could potentially improve the laser's side-mode suppression ratio by introducing additional losses to the higher-order modes. This work demonstrates the concept by presenting the results of a ...

In this paper we report on a laser range finding system built using the self-mixing effect in a Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser (VCSEL). The distance to the target in these range finders is usually calculated by determining the time interval between the peaks in the resulting power fluctuations that are produced by the selfmixing effect. In this study we propose the use of a method that ...