Ultimate Lasing Temperature of Microdisk Lasers

A model is developed that makes it possible to analytically determine the threshold current of a microdisk laser with consideration for its self-heating as a function of the ambient temperature and the microlaser diameter. It is shown that there exists a minimum microdisk diameter determined by self-heating, up to which continuous-wave lasing can be reached at a given temperature. Another manifestation of the self-heating effect is the existence of the ultimate working temperature, which is lower, the smaller the microlaser diameter. Reasonable agreement between the predictions of the model and the available experimental data is shown.