Optical Design Issues in Electrically Pumped Tunable Liquid-Crystal VCSELs

In this work we investigate a tunable 850 nm laser based on a hybrid combination of a liquid crystal micro-cell and a half GaAs VCSEL. The target application is optical coherence tomography. The inherent tolerances of the hybrid technology, the presence of metals in the cavity and the need for a pure extraordinary mode lasing make challenging the optical design of this laser. Hence, VELM, a full 3D and vectorial VCSEL optical solver, is utilized to understand loss mechanisms and provide an optimized design.