Surface Emitting Laser Designs Based on One- and Two-Dimensional Photonic Crystals

Surface emitting lasers have emerged as a useful architecture for numerous applications. Nearly all the current surface emitting lasers are based on planar microcavities which involve the growth of at least one highly reflecting multilayer mirror which also has to transport charge to the recombination region. Such mirrors are difficult to fabricate in many material systems such as GaN and semiconductors for 1.3-1.6microns wavelengths. We propose instead, a class of laser designs based on one- and two-dimensional photonic crystals (PC's) which result in surface emitting lasers with a fabrication process similar to that used in edge-emitting distributed feedback lasers.