Patent ID: 7965755

Claim:
A surface-emitting laser, comprising: a plurality of semiconductor layers laminated on a substrate, the plurality of semiconductor layers including a lower semiconductor multilayer reflection mirror, an active layer, and an upper semiconductor multilayer reflection mirror; and a current confinement layer including an oxidized region and a non-oxidized region, wherein the non-oxidized region is formed of one of AlGaAs and AlAs, wherein a first semiconductor layer includes AlGaAs having a lower Al compositional ratio than an Al compositional ratio of the non-oxidized region, wherein one of the lower semiconductor multilayer reflection minor and the upper semiconductor multilayer reflection mirror includes a first semiconductor layer having a two-dimensional photonic crystal structure of that includes a high refractive index portion and a low refractive index portion, which are arranged in a direction parallel to the substrate, and wherein a second semiconductor layer laminated on the first semiconductor layer includes a microhole, which reaches the low refractive index portion, a cross section of the microhole in the direction parallel to the substrate being smaller than a cross section of the low refractive index portion of the first semiconductor layer.