Manipulation of lasing modes in a circular-side octagonal microcavity laser with a spatially distributed current injection

We propose and demonstrate a circular-side octagonal microcavity (COM) semiconductor laser with a spatially distributed current injection for manipulating the lasing modes. There are two types of high-quality-factor whispering-gallery (WG) modes with distinct field patterns in a COM: the four-bounced quadrilateral modes and the eight-bounced octagonal modes. By designing two separated p-electrodes, the COM laser is divided into two regions that are pumped independently to select specific modes for lasing. The two types of WG modes lase simultaneously when the two regions are injected with equivalent currents. Degeneracy removal of the quadrilateral modes is observed in both simulation and experiment when the two regions are injected with inequivalent currents. The quadrilateral modes are suppressed when one of the two regions is un-injected or biased with a negative current, and single-octagonal-mode lasing is realized. The results show that the lasing modes can be efficiently manipulated with the spatially distributed current injection considering the distinct field patterns of different WG modes in the microcavities, which can promote the practical application of the microcavity lasers. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement