Demonstration of high-power photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers with 1-kHz-class intrinsic linewidths

Abstract

Photonic-crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs) are capable of single-mode, high-power lasing over a large resonator area owing to two-dimensional resonance at a singularity point of the photonic band structure. Since the number of photons in the lasing mode in PCSELs are much larger than those in conventional semiconductor lasers, PCSELs are in principle suitable for coherent operation with a narrow spectral linewidth. In this paper, we numerically and experimentally investigate intrinsic spectral linewidths of 1-mm-diameter PCSELs under continuous-wave (CW) operation, and we demonstrate CW operation with 1-kHz-class intrinsic linewidths and 5-W-class output power.