Polarization dynamics of a multimode vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser subject to orthogonal optical injection

Abstract

We have studied the effect of orthogonal optical injection on a multitransverse-mode vertical-cavity surfaceemitting laser (VCSEL). The injection beam comes from a similar VCSEL. Our results reveal that, when the receiver operates with several strong transverse modes of parallel polarization, optical injection can induce polarization switching in all of them while only one mode is locked to the external frequency. The induced switching can occur for a very weak (a few microwatts) injected beam. Periodic oscillations and low-frequency irregular pulsations are observed as well.

High-frequency microwave signal generation using multi-transverse mode VCSELs subject to two-frequency optical injection

“…Attention has been paid recently on the effects of optical injection on a special type of semiconductor laser: the vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. VCSELs have demonstrated many impressive characteristics, including low threshold current, single-longitudinal mode operation, circular beam profile and easy fabrication in large two-dimensional arrays [2].…”

“…Emission in multiple transverse modes is usually found in solitary VCSELs [11] as a result of spatial-hole burning effect [12]. The effect of single-frequency optical injection on multi-transverse mode VCSELs has been also recently studied, showing that transverse mode selection or polarization switching can appear in these systems [7][8][9][10].…”

Photonic generation of high-frequency microwave signals utilizing a multi-transverse-mode vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser subject to two-frequency orthogonaloptical injection

“…Optical injection in semiconductor lasers, and particularly in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), has been studied extensively in recent years [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. VCSELs are attractive light sources because of their compactness, low power consumption, circular output beam, dense packaging, singlelongitudinal-mode operation, fast response, and low cost [2].…”

“…Locking of the frequency of the injected (slave) VCSEL to that of the injecting (master) laser enhances the VCSEL modulation bandwidth [3,4]. Orthogonal optical injection in VCSELs, in which the polarization of the injected signal is perpendicular to the linear polarization of the VCSEL, has received a lot of attention [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. It has been shown that the VCSEL switches its polarization to that of the master laser when increasing the injection strength [6].…”

“…Most of these studies have been performed for single-transverse-mode VCSELs [6][7][8][9][10][11][12]. The effect of orthogonal optical injection on multi-transverse-mode VCSELs has been also recently studied, showing that PS can be induced in all the transverse modes [13][14][15]. Recent experimental work has demonstrated single-mode [19] and multimode [20] VCSEL-by-VCSEL optical injection locking for obtaining integrated low-cost, high-speed communication modules [19].…”