Tapered-cavity surface-emitting distributed-Bragg-reflector semiconductor lasers: modeling and experiment

We report on the design and fabrication of tapered cavity grating coupled surface-emitting distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) lasers in the 980-nm regime. A curved second-order grating is used at the end of a tapered gain section to provide feedback as well as collimated surface out-coupling. A detailed numerical analysis shows that operation up to approximately twice the threshold is possible without significant degradation of the far field. Near diffraction-limited collimated surface-emitting output with moderate power of about 150 mW is obtained under continuous operation.