Abstract

Surface emitting lasers have wide applications in optical communications, interconnects and information processing. Active tuning and steering of such devices requires integratable, surface-normal mirrors and filters. We present here the first tunable surface-normal distributed Bragg mirror for optical communications wavelengths. The device uses enhanced electrorefraction and electroabsorption in InGaAs/InP quantum wells (QW), which comprise alternate quarter-wave layers in the mirror. The remaining layers in the 31 Bragg pair mirror consist of bulk InP. The measured zero-field transmission of the mirror is in excellent agreement with the spectrum we calculate via the optical matrix method taking into account the spectral dependence of quantum well and bulk InP absorption and refraction. When 17 V is applied to the p-i-n stack, a field of 22.5 kV/cm is dropped across a 7.34 μm intrinsic region and a differential change in transmission of 14% is obtained near 1550 nm. Our calculation shows that the spectral features can be interpreted in terms of quantum confined Stark effect of heavy and light hole excitons, and indicate that with a new contacting scheme we will attain differential transmission changes of ≈ 100 %.

© 1991 Optical Society of America