Evolution of the onset of coherence in a family of photonic crystal nanolasers

The authors report on the systematic variation of the onset of lasing in high- ß photonic crystal nanolasers. A series of nanocavities has been designed to systematically approach the high- ß devices by controlling the number of modes in the s -shell spectrum of InAs quantum dots at 4 K. The lasing action is confirmed by the observation of coherent-state transition to Poissonian photon statistics. The quantitative analysis reveals the high ß of 0.69, 0.44, and 0.19 for the nanocavities with one, two, and three modes, respectively. By mapping the observed lasing transitions to ß factors, the authors demonstrate the interplay of ß and lasing performance.