Vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) with high-power and single-spot far-field distributions at 850-nm wavelength by use of petal-shaped light-emitting apertures

In this letter, we demonstrate a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) with a petal-shaped light-emitting aperture, which is realized by the Zn-diffusion technique, at a wavelength of 850 nm. The demonstrated device behaves like a two-dimensional VCSEL array and each light-emitting unit can have high coherence of in-phase lasing to form a near fundamental supermode emission. The measured far-field distributions of such a device exhibit single-lobe (spot), high-power (>7.5 mW), and narrow divergence angle (/spl sim/6/spl deg/) performance under a wide range of bias current. The ratio of in-phase lasing mode to total lasing modes, which include isolated single mode, in-phase, and out-of-phase modes, has also been analyzed by the measured far-field distributions and the theoretically calculated patterns.