Spatial structure of lasing modes in wave-chaotic semiconductor microcavities
Abstract
We present experimental and numerical studies of broad-area semiconductor lasers with chaotic ray dynamics. The emission intensity distributions at the cavity boundaries are measured and compared to ray tracing simulations and numerical calculations of the passive cavity modes. We study two different cavity geometries, a D-cavity and a stadium, both of which feature fully chaotic ray dynamics. While the far-field distributions exhibit fairly homogeneous emission in all directions, the emission intensity distributions at the cavity boundary are highly inhomogeneous, reflecting the non-uniform intensity distributions inside the cavities. The excellent agreement between experiments and simulations demonstrates that the intensity distributions of wave-chaotic semiconductor lasers are primarily determined by the cavity geometry. This is in contrast to conventional Fabry–Perot broad-area lasers for which the intensity distributions are to a large degree determined by the nonlinear interaction of the lasing modes with the semiconductor gain medium.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1088/1367-2630/ab9e33
Entities
People
- Hui Cao
- Kyungduk Kim
- Qi Jie Wang
- Stefan Bittner
- Yongquan Zeng
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Ministry of Education
- National Research Foundation
- Office of Naval Research