Assessment and Extension of Rapid Design Tools for Modelling Photonic Crystal Surface Emitting Lasers

Lang, Ben; Sewell, Phillip; Vukovic, Ana; Boylan, Karl; Rihani, Samir; Moodie, Dave; Spalding, Richard; Hattasan, Nannicha; Berry, Graham

Abstract

Rapid design tools are invaluable for the fast exploration of design space and optimization of photonic crystal surface-emitting lasers (PCSELs). This paper introduces an improved extension to the fast effective index type approach and compares it against a large number of numerical methods for simulating PCSELs. These methods include two varieties of the effective-index method, coupled mode theory, guided mode expansion, rigorous coupled wave analysis, and an iterated method we derive here. All are compared to one another and against results obtained using a 3D time domain solver and where possible, experimental measurements. We conclude that coupled mode theory, along with the iterated method presented here, are the best approximate methods for 2D modeling of PCSEL devices.

Citation

Lang, B., Sewell, P., Vukovic, A., Boylan, K., Rihani, S., Moodie, D., Spalding, R., Hattasan, N., & Berry, G. (2025). Assessment and Extension of Rapid Design Tools for Modelling Photonic Crystal Surface Emitting Lasers. Journal of the Optical Society of America B, 42(5), 1123-1130. https://doi.org/10.1364/josab.550022

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 19, 2025
• Online Publication Date: Mar 25, 2025
• Publication Date: May 1, 2025
• Deposit Date: Apr 23, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 24, 2025
• Journal: Journal of the Optical Society of America B
• Print ISSN: 0740-3224
• Electronic ISSN: 1520-8540
• Publisher: Optical Society of America
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 42
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 1123-1130
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/josab.550022
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/48094658
• Publisher URL: https://opg.optica.org/josab/fulltext.cfm?uri=josab-42-5-1123&id=570464