Light emission patterns from stadium-shaped semiconductor microcavity lasers

TL;DR

This paper investigates light emission patterns from stadium-shaped semiconductor microcavity lasers through theoretical calculations and experiments, showing good agreement with ray models and dependence on cavity aspect ratio.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis combining wave calculations and experimental data to validate ray models for stadium-shaped microcavity lasers.

Findings

Emission patterns match ray model predictions

Low-loss modes lead to characteristic emission patterns

Aspect ratio influences far-field emission patterns

Abstract

We study light emission patterns from stadium-shaped semiconductor (GaAs) microcavity lasers theoretically and experimentally. Performing systematic wave calculations for passive cavity modes, we demonstrate that the averaging by low-loss modes, such as those realized in multi-mode lasing, generates an emission pattern in good agreement with the ray model's prediction. In addition, we show that the dependence of experimental far-field emission patterns on the aspect ratio of the stadium cavity is well reproduced by the ray model.