Design of high-power and narrow divergence angle photonic crystal surface emitting lasers

Abstract

We design photonic crystal (PC) array surface emitting lasers with large-area coherence. The structure has six-fold rotational symmetry. By finite-difference time-domain method, we investigate the far-field characteristics of the individual element and the array. We demonstrate theoretically that the coherent PC array has lower far-field divergence angles and higher power compared to those of individual elements. Our PC array exhibits strong leaky coupling which has high mode stability and high intermodal discrimination. Thus, the coherent PC array shows great potential for high power low divergence in-phase surface laser emitting.