Modal Behavior of Buried Heterostructure Vertical Cavity Semiconductor Lasers

Mode control of vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSEL) is important for many applications ranging from optical interconnects to optical communications. Recently we have reported a novel buried heterostructure (BH) VCSEL lasing in a stable fundamental transverse mode [1] with the use of a passive antiguide region inside of the cavity. In the presence of a guiding boundary along the laser cavity, an analysis of mode structure cannot be based on an integral equation approach [2], but it is necessary to implement round-trip beam-propagation method. This paper is devoted to a detailed analysis of mode structure and modal losses of cavities with different antiguide and guiding regions.