Highly birefringent and dichroic photonic crystal VCSEL design

We analyse the possibility to stabilise the polarisation of light emitted by photonic crystal vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (PC-VCSELs). We consider two different photonic crystal configurations in a GaAs/AlGaAs VCSEL: with elliptical holes and with selectively enlarged holes and a small central hole. Very large birefringence (similar to 400 GHz) and dichroism (similar to 7%) are demonstrated for the second PC-VCSEL design. (c) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.