Hot electron light emitting and laser semiconductor heterostructure (HELLISH-1) is a novel surface emitting device. It utilizes longitudinal transport where electric fields heat up electrons and holes in their respective channels simultaneously. Hot electrons and holes are then captured by mainly tunnelling and thermionic emission in the quantum well where radiative recombination occurs. In this work, we demonstrate and compare the operation of HELLISH-1 and ultrabright HELLISH-1 (UB-HELLISH-1). The latter is an improved version of HELLISH-1 which incorporates a distributed Bragg reflector allowing detection of super radiant emission with a vastly improved full width at half-maximum. It is also shown that the emitted light intensity in the UB-HELLISH-1 device is enhanced by about two orders of magnitude compared with the simple structure. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.