Temporally resolved measurements of the emission pattern of semiconductor lasers

This project deals with the study of semiconductor lasers. The development of high performance semiconductor lasers during the last decades has ensured that these optical sources today play a central role in many applications. We want to develop new and unique features with semiconductor lasers by manipulating their spectral, dynamical and coherence properties. Therefore we will study in this project the temporal and spatially resolved emission pattern of VCSELs. In this way we want to investigate how optical modes build up in a cavity that supports multiple transverse modes. We will also investigate the dynamic competition between these modes. This should give us more insight into the appearance of spatially incoherent laser emission, a unique and promising emission regime that can be induced in this type of lasers. This study will also make an important contribution to verify and fine-tune theoretical semiconductor laser models.