Digital camera with VCSELs

A digital camera system, comprising:

• a tunable VCSEL laser including:
• a first mirror;
• one or more active regions with a first active region adjacent to the first mirror, each of an active region including quantum wells and barriers, each of an active region surrounded by one or more p-n junctions, the one or more active regions including a selected shape structure each with a tunnel junction (TJ);
• one or more apertures provided with the selected shape structure;
• one or more buried tunnel junctions (BTJ), additional TJ's, planar structures and/or additional BTJ's are created during a regrowth process that is independent of a first growth process of the first mirror, the active region and the one or more TJs;
• one or more electrical confinement apertures defined by the one or more BTJ's, additional TJ's, planar structures and/or additional BTJ;
• a vertical resonator cavity disposed over the electrical confinement aperture;
• a high contrast grating (HCG) operating as a second mirror positioned over the vertical resonator cavity, the HCG configured to reflect a first portion of light back into the vertical resonator cavity, and a second portion of the light as an output beam from the tunable VCSEL laser, the HCG structure being layered on the selected shape structure;
• wherein a shape of the output beam of the light emitting device is determined by a geometric shape of the one or more BTJ apertures, apertures for additional TJ's, planar structures and/or additional BTJ's, with a transmission function of the HCG and is designed according to the desired optical transmission function of the application;
• a user monitoring device that includes the tunable VCSEL laser;
• a camera with an interior;
• an image sensor coupled to the camera and having a plurality of sensor pixels for capturing a digital image;
• and
• an imaging lens for forming an image of a scene onto an image plane, the imaging lens having an imaging lens aperture.