Novel design of a hybrid-cavity surface-emitting laser

A new type of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is proposed and analyzed to show the possibility of optical pumping from an integrated edge-emitting laser. With this scheme, it may be possible to make VCSEL's of very small dimensions and VCSEL arrays. The laser design utilizes dopant induced intermixing of quantum wells (QW's) to provide different gain regions for the surface and edge-emitting sections. The multimode rate equations are used to evaluate the possibility of such a laser and the roles of the various design parameters are discussed. It is seen that efficient surface photon emission is possible for high vertical-cavity mirror reflectivities and sufficient separation of bandgap energies for the two QW gain regions.