Comparison of optical VCSEL models on the simulation of oxide-confined devices

Abstract—We compare the results of different optical vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser models on the position-dependent effects of thin oxide apertures. Both scalar and vectorial models as well as hybrid models are considered. Physical quantities that are compared are resonance wavelength, threshold material gain, and modal stability. For large device diameters and low-order modes, the agreement between the different models is quite good. Larger differences occur when considering smaller devices and higher order modes. It is also observed that the spread in the resonance wavelengths is smaller than that for the threshold material gain. Index Terms—Distributed Bragg reflector lasers, laser modes, semiconductor device modeling, semiconductor lasers, surface-emitting lasers. I