Speed enhancement in VCSELs employing grating mirrors

Abstract

In recent years, various approaches to improve the speed of directly modulated vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have been reported and demonstrated good improvement. In this paper, we propose and numerically investigate a new possibility of using high-index-contrast grating (HCG) as mirror for VCSELs. By changing the grating design, one can control the reflection delay of the grating mirror, enabling the control of cavity photon lifetime. On the other hand, short energy penetration depth of the HCG results in smaller modal volume, compared to DBR VCSELs. An example structure shows that the HCG VCSEL has a 30-% higher 3-dB bandwidth than the DBR VCSEL.