The physical working principles of whispering gallery mode semiconductor disk lasers are examined. A new method is proposed for measuring the single-pass gain. The theory of cylindrical waveguides is considered. The spectral characteristics of whispering gallery mode lasers is investigated experimentally in the temperature range 4-300 K. It is shown that lasers of this kind are very promising as potential laser radiation sources operating at room temperature.
Copyright 2007 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Low Temperature Physics, 33 (2-3), 2007 and may be found at http://link.aip.org/link/?LTPHEG/33/283/1
