Study of anisotropic effects in spin lasers and their application in modern technology

Abstract

Thesis explores the use of dielectric or semiconductor gratings in laser cavities as the main building block of spin-injected lasers with vertical geometry (spin-VCSELs) for ultrafast data transfer reaching up to hundreds of Gb/s. Compared to intensity-modulated lasers, spin-lasers allow for direct control of emitted polarization using electron spin injection. Anisotropy can be introduced via periodic grating, which couples circularly polarized photons emitted from quantum wells with spin-polarized population, resulting in a shorter response time. Effective medium theory is used in the transfer matrix formalism to extract the eigenmodes of a cavity with periodic structures, and mathematical tools are used to calculate optimal parameters of birefringent grating for designing cavities with the desired functionality. Focus is put on calculating photon lifetimes, generalized confinement factors and frequencies or eigenmodes, which are essential for studying the dynamical performance of grating-based spin-VCSELs.