Small, low-loss heterogeneous photonic bandedge laser

Abstract

We have demonstrated the operation of a new type of heterogeneous photonic crystal laser, a five-lattice-constant large photonic bandedge laser assisted by a photonic bandgap, in a triangular lattice at room temperature. When the air hole radius of the surrounding photonic crystal ( PC) is slightly smaller than that of the bandedge mode region, most in-plane losses of the first K point bandedge mode in the central region are suppressed and the quality factor of the mode is greatly enhanced to 50000. We identified the photonic bandgap-bandedge (PBG-BE) lasing modes through the spectral position, near-field pattern, and the state of polarization, which correspond well with the results of the three-dimensional (3D) finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method computation. The two-dimensional (2D) feedback mechanism of the first K bandedge was verified through the Fourier analysis. Low threshold incident peak pump power of similar to 0.24 mW is achieved owing to the low optical loss of the PBG-BE mode. (C) 2004 Optical Society of America.