Triggering of guiding and antiguiding effects in GaN-based VCSELs

We show numerically that many recently proposed GaN-based VCSEL cavities, with DBR mirrors deposited onto the current aperture, balance dangerously close to the border between the guided and antiguided regime. A guided cavity is often preferred because of its lower optical loss, but a strongly antiguided cavity offers built-in modal discrimination favoring single fundamental mode operation. We show that very small changes in the VCSEL structure are sufficient to strongly change the guiding character of the VCSEL cavity, and that thermal lensing caused by device self-heating under operation can dramatically reduce the optical loss but not the modal discrimination in the antiguided cavities.