Feature

Concentric-Circle-Grating, Surface-Emitting Semiconductor Lasers

Turan Erdogan, Oliver King, Gary W. Wicks, Dennis G. Hall, Erik H. Anderson and Michael J. Rooks

It is possible to make use of a concentric-circle grating (CCG) to define a novel Bragg resonator for a semiconductor laser. This fundamentally unique, two-dimensional optical resonator confines the propagation of circular waves through a distributed feedback (DFB) process. Such a laser, when operated in the second Bragg order, offers the prospect of surface emission from a broad area, circularly symmetric aperture. As a result, this laser can emit a low divergence, spectrally narrow beam that is circular in cross section.

Publish Date: 01 December 1992