Abstract

Long wavelength GaInAsP/InP vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSEL’s) are promising for optical communication systems. In order to achieve cw operation, analysis of thermal design is important. In terms of efficient heat dissipation, a reduction of an active region is effective, but a diffraction loss becomes larger when the active region becomes small. We employed a calculation model of VCSEL’s with SiN/Si DBR. A finite difference method is employed to calculate a temperature distribution in the cavity. The thermal resistance of the heat sink is also estimated by a separation-of-variables solution using Bessel functions. A beam propagation method is employed to calculate the diffraction loss. A field distribution is self-consistently obtained by iterative propagations in the cavity. From these results, an optimization of the structure is performed, and it is found that room temperature cw operation can be expected by reducing the active area and employing Fe-doped InP regrowth and a high-reflectivity mirror.

© 1992 Optical Society of America