Investigation of cavity mode and excitonic transition in an InGaAs/GaAs/AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface emitting laser structure by variable-temperature micro-photoluminescence, reflectance and photomodulated reflectance

Variable-temperature micro-photoluminescence (μ-PL), reflectance (R) and photomodulated reflectance (PR) have been used to study an InGaAs/GaAs/AlGaAs vertical-cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) structure. μ-PL and R spectra have been recorded at different temperatures between 80 K and 300 K By comparing μ-PL with R spectra, both the excitonic transition and cavity mode are clearly identified. The Variable-temperature μ-PL and PR results of the etched sample with the top distributed Bragg reflectors (DBR) being removed further confirmed our identification. Our results demonstrate that variable-temperature μ-PL is a powerful noninvasive tool to measure accurate the quantum well transition and the cavity mode alignment.