Exploring the influence of boundary shapes on emission angular distributions and polarization states of broad-area vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

We design the stadium-shaped and rectangular vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) to investigate the influence of boundary shapes on the emission angular distributions and polarization states. For the stadium-shaped VCSELs, the emission angular distribution prefers to be almost omnidirectional because the lasing mode with purely scarred structure is seldom to be excited. On the contrary, the rectangular VCSELs usually generate dominant lasing modes with the morphology of quasi-periodic linear ridges, which can make emission angular distribution to be concentrated on the certain direction. From the polarization-resolved light-current curves, the stadium-shaped VCSEL is quite prone to exhibit numerous abrupt changes (kinks) associated with polarization switching with increasing current, whereas for rectangular VCSEL there is no conspicuous kink to be seen during a wide range of current changing from near to far above lasing threshold. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America