Decimated Photonic Crystal Defect Cavity Lasers

We present the design, fabrication, and characterization of decimated lattice photonic crystal membrane lasers. Based on our simulated designs, decimated photonic crystal lattices have reduced number of holes, which enhance the current and heat conductive paths from the optical cavity with a minimal impact on the cavity quality factor and resonance. Our calculations indicate lower operating temperature using the decimation lattice designs. Two decimated cavity designs are demonstrated and compared to conventional photonic crystal defect cavity lasers in InP-based membranes. The decimated designs show improved laser performance with a small reduction of measured cavity quality factor. Reduction of the photonic crystal holes around the defect cavity to as few as two periods still enables photopumped operation of photonic crystal defect lasers. The improvement in the thermal properties is characterized by varying the photopumping duty cycle.