METHOD OF MANUFACTURING SURFACE-EMITTING LASER ELEMENT

A method of manufacturing a surface-emitting laser, includes (a) forming a first semiconductor layer including a photonic-crystal (PC) layer, (b) growing, on the first semiconductor layer, an active layer and a second semiconductor layer, (c) performing spectrometry in which a thickness from a surface of the second semiconductor layer to a position where the spectrometry light is reflected by the PC layer is measured, (d) forming a translucent electrode having a thickness calculated based on an optical path length corresponding to the thickness obtained by the spectrometry on the second semiconductor layer, and (e) forming a reflection layer on the translucent electrode, in which the layer thickness of the translucent electrode is determined such that a light intensity of interference light of (i) direct diffracted light radiated from the PC layer and (ii) reflected diffracted light radiated from the PC layer and reflected by the reflection layer is larger than a light intensity of the direct diffracted light.