The Influences of Boundary Shapes on Polarization Characteristics and Lasing Modes in Broad-Area Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers With Cryogenic Detuning: Regular Versus Chaotic Cavities

The broad-area rectangular-shaped and stadium-shaped VCSELs with nearly the same aspect ratio are designed to explore the influence of lateral boundary shapes on polarization states and lasing spectra with large detuning by cryogenic cooling. For the rectangular-shaped VCSEL, the lasing modes usually exhibit linearly polarized state and their far-field emissions mainly concentrate on four diagonal directions. On the other hand, the lasing modes of the stadium-shaped VCSEL generally display two orthogonally polarized states and their far-field emissions extensively spread on azimuthal directions. More intriguingly, the lasing spectra of the two devices clearly manifest the features of the energy-level distribution in regular and chaotic quantum billiards, respectively.