Microwave extraction method of radiative recombination and photon lifetimes up to 85 °C on 50 Gb/s oxide-vertical cavity surface emitting laser

Abstract

Optical modulation bandwidth for a semiconductor diode laser is governed by the thermally limited spontaneous radiative recombination lifetime, τrec, photon lifetime, τp, and cavity photon density for stimulated recombination. Thus, temperature dependent recombination lifetime is a critical parameter for the limitation of photonic device operations. Here, we develop a microwave extraction method to accurately determine the radiative recombination and photon lifetimes over a temperature range up to 85 °C through the equivalent circuit modeling based on the measured microwave scattering-parameters. For an 850 nm oxide-vertical cavity surface emitting laser with error free data transmission capability over 50 Gb/s, the extracted lifetimes are τrec = 0.1778 ns and τp = 4.2 ps at 25 °C and τrec = 0.2445 ns and τp = 4.8 ps at 85 °C.