VCSEL with multi-transverse cavities with bandwidth beyond 100 GHz

Abstract

To fulfill the demands of high-speed photonic applications, researchers, and engineers have been working to improve the modulation bandwidth (MBW) of semiconductor lasers. We extend our prior work on modeling a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with multiple transverse-coupled-cavities (MTCCs) to evaluate the feasibility of boosting MBW beyond 100 GHz in this study. Because of the strong coupling of slow-light feedback from nearby lateral transverse coupled cavities (TCCs) into the VCSEL cavity, the laser has a high modulation performance. The intensity modulation response of the VCSEL design using one, two, four, and six TCCs is compared. Due to the optical-feedback (OFB) from short TCCs, which achieves 3 dB MBW reaching 170 GHz, photon–photon-resonance (PPR) is projected to occur at ultra-high frequencies beyond 145 GHz. In terms of the Fourier spectrum of the relative intensity noise (RIN), we characterize the noise features of the MTCC-VCSEL in the ultra-high bandwidth domain.

Keywords

• optical feedback
• transverse coupled cavity
• vcsel