Modulation of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser using an intracavity quantum-well absorber

We demonstrate a novel modulation technique with a vertical cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) using an intracavity embedded voltage-biased quantum well absorber. We achieved a -3-dB small-signal bandwidth of 9 GHz and a response of 7 GHz//spl radic/(mA) by modulation of the absorber. Our calculations show that this technique introduces significantly less chirp at higher frequencies than direct current modulation.