Stabilization of flat-mirror vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers by spatiotemporal modulation of the pump profile

Abstract

We propose and demonstrate theoretically that vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VECSELs) with external flat mirrors can be stabilized by applying a periodic spatiotemporal modulation of the pump current. Such pump modulation is shown to suppress the pattern-forming instabilities (modulation instabilities), which eventually results in stable beam emission. A modified Floquet linear stability analysis is used to characterize the dynamics of the modulated system and to evaluate its stabilization performance. Stability maps identify the regions in parameter space for complete and partial stabilization of VECSELs operating in different regimes depending on the external-cavity length. In particular, the stabilization method is shown to operate most efficiently in Class-A laser limit (for relatively long VECSEL resonators), while it becomes ineffective in Class-B laser limit (for relatively short resonators). The stabilization effect is further confirmed through direct integration of the dynamical equations.