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Published on: July 12, 2017
Propagation of spatially partially coherent emission from a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser
Michael Peeters1, Guy Verschaffelt, Johan Speybrouck
1Department of Applied Physics and Photonics, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. michael.peeters@ieee.org
Abstract:
Recently we observed a strong reduction of spatial coherence of the emission of large-aperture vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers when they are driven by microsecond electrical pulses [Opt. Express 13, 9337 (2005)]. We study the influence of this partial spatial coherence on the propagation characteristics. The spatial decoherence manifests itself in the formation of a Gaussian far-field intensity distribution. We measure the transverse pulse profile from near to far field and see that the shape-invariant far-field regime starts after 140 microm in the pulsed regime as opposed to several centimeters in continuous wave operation. This value matches quantitatively calculations made with a novel partially coherent propagation model without any free fitting parameters.
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