VARIABLE WAVELENGTH SURFACE EMITTING LASER

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a VCSEL(vertical cavity surface-emitting laser) which can varies the wavelength of the emitted laser light at a high speed without varying the temperature. SOLUTION: The VCSEL is equipped with a current limitting layer 82 on a lower DBR(distributed bragg reflctor) 50 and is provided with electrodes 94a, 94b to vary the width of an effective resonance region on a region given to an upper DBR layer 70 for emitting light, other than upper electrodes 92a, 92b and lower electrodes 90 for oscillating a laser. Thereby, the wavelength of the emitted light can be not only varied at a higher speed than employing a prior VCSEL, but a decrease of a gain characteristics of laser oscillation produced when varying the width of the effective resonance region through the prior temperature variation can be prevented, and the emitted light wavelength variation region can be increased. COPYRIGHT: (C)2004,JPO