Small-sized vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) offer the possibility of very low power consumption along with high reliability for cryogenic data transfer. Cryogenic data transfer has applications in focal plane array cameras operating at 77 K, and at the lower temperature of 4 K for data extraction from superconducting circuits. A theoretical analysis is presented for 77 K and 4 K operation based on small cavity, oxide-free VCSEL sizes of 2 to $6~\mu \text{m}$ , that have been shown to operate efficiently at room temperature. Temperature dependent operation for optimally-designed VCSELs are studied by calculating the response of the laser at 77 K and 4 K to estimate their bias conditions needed to reach modulation speed for cryogenic optical links. The temperature influence is to decrease threshold for reducing temperature, and to increase differential gain for reducing temperature. The two effects predict very low bias currents for small cavity VCSELs to reach needed data speed for cryogenic optical data links. Changing the number of top-mirror pairs has also been studied to determine how cavity design impacts speed and bit energy. Our design and performance predictions paves the way for realizing highly efficient, ultra-small VCSEL arrays with applications in optical interconnects.

中文翻译：

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用于 77 K 和 4 K 光学数据应用的 VCSEL 的激光特性

小型垂直腔面发射激光器 (VCSEL) 为低温数据传输提供了极低功耗和高可靠性的可能性。低温数据传输适用于在 77 K 下工作的焦平面阵列相机，以及在 4 K 的较低温度下从超导电路中提取数据。基于 2 至 $6~\mu \text{m}$ 的小腔、无氧化物 VCSEL 尺寸，对 77 K 和 4 K 操作进行了理论分析，这些 VCSEL 已被证明在室温下有效运行。通过计算激光器在 77 K 和 4 K 下的响应来估计它们达到低温光学链路调制速度所需的偏置条件，研究了优化设计的 VCSEL 的温度相关操作。温度影响是降低降低温度的阈值，并增加微分增益以降低温度。这两种效应预测小腔 VCSEL 的偏置电流非常低，以达到低温光学数据链路所需的数据速度。还研究了改变顶部反射镜对的数量以确定腔设计如何影响速度和位能量。我们的设计和性能预测为实现高效、超小型 VCSEL 阵列在光互连中的应用铺平了道路。