Abstract

Previously, near-diffraction-limited beam quality was obtained from mid-inffared (mid-IR) lasers with 50-μm-wide Gaussian stripes using the angled-grating distributed-feedback (a-DFB) approach,¹ Unfortunately, the far-field characteristics degraded rather rapidly with increasing stripe width, and the emission linewidth was not appreciably different from that of Fabry-Perot lasers with the same stripe width, indicating low spectral selectivity.^1,2 Recently, we performed selfconsistent time-domain Fourier-transform (TDFT) simulations³ that projected an improved beam quality and a strong enhancement in spectra) purity by replacing the angled grating with a 2D photonic-crystal distributed-feedback (PCDFB) structure shown schematically in Fig. 1. In the PCDFB laser, the diffraction directing the mode in a zigzag pattern (e.g., from P₁, to P₂ in Fig. 1) is supplemented by two additional processes that couple the forward and backward- propagating beams (e.g., from P₁, to –P₁, and –P₂).

© 2002 Optical Society of America