Very small oxide-confined vertical microcavity lasers with high-contrast AlGaAs-Al/sub x/Oy mirrors

We report the photo-pumped lasing action from a very small oxide-confined 870-nm vertical microcavity lasers with high-contrast AlGaAs-Al/sub x/O/sub y/ mirrors. The effective cavity length is as small as 0.37 μm, and the oxide aperture size is 0.73 μm, estimated from the blue-shift of lasing mode due to the lateral confinement. The observed blue-shift of the lasing mode is 13.4 nm, the largest one ever reported for vertical cavity lasers. The optical losses seem to be size-independent for these small microcavity lasers. Our results indicate the possibility of the ultimate microcavity of order of /spl lambda/3.