Polarization switching and injection locking in vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers subject to parallel optical injection

Polarization switching in a long-wavelength VCSEL under
parallel optical injection is analyzed in a theoretical and
experimental way. For the first time to our knowledge we
report experimentally a state in which injection locking
of the parallel polarization and excitation of the freerunning
orthogonal polarization of the VCSEL are
simultaneously obtained. We obtain very simple
analytical expressions that describe both linear
polarizations. We show that the power of both linear
polarizations depend linearly on the injected power in
such a way that the total power emitted by the VCSEL is
constant. We perform a linear stability analysis of this
solution to characterize the region of parameters in
which it can be observed. Our measurements
qualitatively confirm the previous theoretical
predictions