Effect of Hole Shift on Threshold Characteristics of GaSb-Based Double-Hole Photonic-Crystal Surface-Emitting Lasers

Photonic-crystal (PC) surface-emitting lasers (SELs) with double-hole structure in the square-lattice unit cell were fabricated on GaSb-based type-I InGaAsSb/AlGaAsSb heterostructures. The relative shift of two holes was varied within one half of the lattice period. We measured the lasing wavelengths and threshold pumping densities of 16 PC-SELs and investigated their dependence on the double-hole shift. The experimental results were compared to the simulated wavelengths and threshold gains of four band-edge modes. The measured lasing wavelength did not exhibit switching of band-edge mode; however, the calculated lowest threshold mode switched as the double-hole shift exceeded one quarter of the lattice period. The identification of band-edge lasing mode revealed that modal gain discrimination was dominated over by its mode wavelength separation.