Evolution of multi-mode emission from vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Abstract

We present a systematic investigation of the longitudinal multi-mode emission in a vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser using both streak camera measurements and interferometric measurement techniques. We observe a steep increase of the emission bandwidth close to the laser threshold with only minor variances at higher pump powers. Additionally, we show that in our configurations the stability of a two-color emission process is linked to a sufficiently high number of longitudinal modes participating in the laser emission.