基于垂直微腔的光器件为自由空间与光纤中传播的光信号提供了简易的接入方式,极大地降低了器件封装的成本.垂直外腔表面发光激光器(也被称为半导体盘形激光器)结合了固态激光器和半导体激光器的优点,为开发新型紧凑的激光光源提供了新方法.对基于垂直腔的短脉冲源的研究现状进行一个简单的综述后,介绍了一些基于1.55 μm波长的亚皮秒光脉冲源的最新研究结果.这种脉冲源由InP基的垂直面发射激光器和GaAs基的半导体饱和吸收镜构成.

Optical devices based on vertical microcavities offer an easy access to optical signals,propagated either in free space or in optical fibres,which presents a serious advantage when cost-related packaging issues are considered.In addition,vertical external cavity surface emitting lasers (also called semiconductor disk lasers) combine advantageous characteristics of solid state lasers and of semiconductor lasers,and therefore constitute an interesting approach for developing new compact laser sources.After a short state-of the-art review on vertical-cavity-based short pulse sources,I shall present some recent results obtained in our group for the generation of sub-ps optical pulses at 1.55 μm wavelength.This source relies on the association of an InP-based vertical external cavity surface emitting laser (VECSEL) and a GaAs-based semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM).