Deformed microcavity quantum cascade lasers with directional emission

We report the experimental realization of deformed microcavity quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) with a Limaçon-shaped chaotic resonator. Directional light emission with a beam divergence of θ_∥ ≈ 33° from QCLs emitting at λ ≈ 10 μm was obtained in the plane of the cavity for deformations in the range 0.37 < ε < 0.43. An excellent agreement between measured and calculated far-field profiles was found. Both simulations and experiments show that the Limaçon-shaped microcavity preserves whispering gallery-like modes with high Q-factors for low deformations (ε < 0.50). In addition, while the measured spectra show a transition from whispering gallery-like modes to a more complex mode structure at higher pumping currents, we observed 'universal far-field behavior' for different intracavity mode distributions in the Limaçon microcavity, which can be explained by the distribution of unstable manifolds in ray optics simulations. Furthermore, the performance of the deformed microcavity lasers is robust with respect to variations of the deformation near its optimum value ε = 0.40, which implies that this structure reduces the requirements on photolithography fabrication. The successful realization of these microcavity lasers may lead to applications in optoelectronics.