Inside vertical, cavity surface-emitting lasers: Extracting the refractive, index from spatial-spectral mode images

We present a method to extract the internal effective refractive index of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) from its transverse mode images. High spatial and spectral resolution mode images of an oxide-guided VCSEL were obtained using an etalon filter and an imaging spectrometer. The refractive index and them oxide radius were extracted from the field intensity distribution and the spectral wavelength of the laser modes. The procedure was repeated at two different currents and both gave a refractive index step of 0.046 +/- 0.006 with a 14.1-mu m oxide diameter. With several degrees of freedom for error available in the refractive index. extraction, this method may be extended to ion-implanted, photonic crystal, and noncircular devices.