Experimental evidence of single round-trip oscillation in polarization self-modulated vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers

The polarizations and frequencies of the two eigenstates of a vertical cavity surface emitting laser with an external cavity containing a quarter-wave plate are theoretically and experimentally analyzed. It is shown that the polarizations of these eigenstates are fixed by the neutral axes of the quarter-wave plate. The optical pulses at a frequency equal to a half of the free spectral range of the external cavity, observed through a linear polarizer, are due to beats between the two eigenstates. All these features show that such polarization self-modulated lasers oscillate in a single round trip.