Optically-Pumped Vertical-External-Cavity Semiconductor-Lasers (OP-VECSELs) present high power circular diffraction limited output beams. Moreover, the external cavity allows the realization of passively modelocked pulsed sources by inserting a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) in the cavity. This work consisted in the realization and the study of OP-VECSELs, SESAMs and optical cavities for the obtention of a short pulse source at 1.55 µm.The main part of this work was the design, the characterization, and the obtention of continuous wave (CW) lasing operation of monolithically grown OP-VECSELs on InP. The major difficulty for the obtention of CW lasing operation is due to the low thermal conductivity of the materials lattice matched to InP, leading to an important heating of the devices during CW optical pumping. Despite of these difficulties, a proper design of the structures allowed the obtention of room temperature CW lasing operation, with a lasing threshold of 6 kW/cm², and an output power as high as 4 mW at 0°C. This result is at the state of the art of 1.55 µm monolithically grown OP-VECSELs lattice matched to InP. However, we show that the realization of a modelocked source implies a reduction of the thermal resistivity of the OP-VECSELs, and we thus propose non-monolithical devices matching this condition.High bit rate pulse generation implies the acceleration of the SESAM dynamics. We thus propose an original SESAM configuration where the quantum well (acting as a saturable absorber) is grown very close to the surface of the device. This enhances the rapid recombination of the charge carriers on the surface states of the SESAMs. We also propose configurations of compact optical cavities compatible with the obtention of high bit rate pulses (> 2 GHz).
