The realization of high-$\beta$ lasers is one of the prime applications of cavity QED promising ultra-low thresholds, integrability, and reduced power consumption in the field of green photonics. In such nanolasers, spontaneous emission can play a central role even above the threshold. By going beyond rate-equation approaches, we revisit the definition of a laser threshold in terms of the input-output characteristics and the degree of coherence of the emission. We demonstrate that there are new regimes of cavity-QED lasing, realized, e.g., in high-$Q$ nanolasers with extended gain material, for which the two can differ significantly such that coherence is reached at much higher pump powers than required to observe the thresholdlike intensity jump. Against the common perception, such devices do not benefit from high-$\beta$ factors in terms of power reduction, as a significant amount of stimulated emission is required to quieten the spontaneous emission noise.

• Received 10 August 2018
• Revised 23 October 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.10.054055