Vertical cavity lasers for telecom applications

The authors review the development of long-wavelength vertical cavity lasers (VCLs) for telecommunications applications. Long-wavelength VCLs provide an attractive choice for inexpensive fiber optic communication. The different designs of such lasers are presented, along with the advantages and disadvantages of each. System requirements and experiments are also presented at 2.5 Gb/s over 200 km of optical fiber.