Abstract

Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) are in many ways ideal for chemical sensing. A spectrally-narrow single-mode output beam with relatively low divergence may be obtained by confining the lateral dimensions to the order of a few wavelengths, whereas edge-emitting semiconductor lasers must either undergo extensive processing or employ an external cavity. However, until now the only published report of a short-cavity VCSEL emitting at a wavelength beyond 1.7 μm was a HgCdTe device which operated only to T = 30 K and required a threshold pump intensity of 45 kW/cm2 at 10 K.1

© 1998 Optical Society of America