Efficient first-principles inverse design of nanolasers

Abstract

We develop and demonstrate a first-principles approach, based on the nonlinear Maxwell-Bloch equations and steady-state ab-initio laser theory (SALT), for inverse design of nanostructured lasers, incorporating spatial hole-burning corrections, threshold effects, out-coupling efficiency, and gain diffusion. The resulting figure of merit exploits the high-$Q$ regime of optimized laser cavities to perturbatively simplify the nonlinear model to a single linear ''reciprocal'' Maxwell solve. The consequences for laser-cavity design, and in particular the strong dependence on the nature of the gain region, are demonstrated using topology optimization of both 2d and full 3d geometries.