Patent ID: 7801195
Filing Date: 2010-09-21
Classification: H01S

Abstract:
1. A semiconductor zigzag external cavity surface emitting optical apparatus, comprising: a chip having a sequence of layers of materials; the chip including at least two regenerative semiconductor gain elements disposed proximate a planar layer boundary of the chip; each individual regenerative semiconductor gain element including an electrically pumped gain region to provide gain to an optical mode of the apparatus and at least one distributed Bragg reflector, each regenerative semiconductor gain element having a diameter, d, with a separation distance, S, between each neighboring regenerative semiconductor gain element selected such that a fill factor defined by d divided by S is less than one; the chip including a substrate layer region including at least one layer, the substrate layer region being substantially transparent at a wavelength of the optical mode with the substrate region including a reflective surface parallel to and spaced apart from the planar layer boundary associated with the at least two regenerative gain elements; at least one optical entrance/exit surface region of the chip to couple light into the chip in a zigzag path via a sequence of reflections between the reflective surface of the substrate region and the distributed Bragg reflectors of each regenerative semiconductor gain element with the zigzag path further having an antinode at the gain region of each regenerative semiconductor gain element; at least one external optical element to form an external cavity providing optical feedback back into the chip and to control transverse optical mode characteristics of the optical mode to form an output beam having a fundamental Gaussian spatial mode.