Polarization selection due to scattering losses in nonaxisymmetric vertical cavity surface emitting laser cavities

摘要

A theoretical explanation is offered for the polarization pinning in vertical cavity surface emitting laser cavities with deliberately imposed lack of axisymmetry. The analytic computation of scattering losses shows that, for medium to small aperture sizes, differentiation in modal Q's among the two polarizations is sufficient to overrule intrinsic near-degeneracies and maintain polarization throughout operation range. It is also shown that the prevailing polarization, the one with lowest round-trip losses, is aligned with the longest aperture dimension, in agreement with experiments. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.