Buried heterostructure vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser with semiconductor mirrors

We report a buried heterostructure vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser fabricated by epitaxial regrowth over an InGaAs quantum well gain medium. The regrowth technique enables microscale lateral confinement that preserves a high cavity quality factor (loaded $Q\approx$ 4000) and eliminates parasitic charging effects found in existing approaches. Under optimal spectral overlap between gain medium and cavity mode (achieved here at $T$ = 40 K) lasing was obtained with an incident optical power as low as $P_{\rm th}$ = 10 mW ($\lambda_{\rm p}$ = 808 nm). The laser linewidth was found to be $\approx$3 GHz at $P_{\rm p}\approx$ 5 $P_{\rm th}$.