Emission properties of 6.7μm continuous-wave PbSe-based vertical-emitting microcavity lasers operating up to 100K

A detailed analysis of midinfrared cw lasing of IV–VI vertical-cavity surface-emitting devices is presented. The structures, based on high-finesse microcavities containing PbSe as active medium, show optically pumped cw laser emission up to temperatures of 100K at a long wavelength of 6.7μm. Stimulated emission with a very narrow beam divergence below 1° and a large temperature tuning range of 70nm is found. The measured linewidth of the laser emission is only 0.6nm, limited by the spectrometer resolution with a strong narrowing with respect to the linewidth of the subthreshold signal. The observed cw output power amounts up to 1.2mW at 85K.