Photonic crystal surface-emitting lasers enabled by an accidental Dirac point

Patent · 02 December 2014

OSTI ID:1164669

Chua, Song Liang; Lu, Ling; Soljacic, Marin

A photonic-crystal surface-emitting laser (PCSEL) includes a gain medium electromagnetically coupled to a photonic crystal whose energy band structure exhibits a Dirac cone of linear dispersion at the center of the photonic crystal's Brillouin zone. This Dirac cone's vertex is called a Dirac point; because it is at the Brillouin zone center, it is called an accidental Dirac point. Tuning the photonic crystal's band structure (e.g., by changing the photonic crystal's dimensions or refractive index) to exhibit an accidental Dirac point increases the photonic crystal's mode spacing by orders of magnitudes and reduces or eliminates the photonic crystal's distributed in-plane feedback. Thus, the photonic crystal can act as a resonator that supports single-mode output from the PCSEL over a larger area than is possible with conventional PCSELs, which have quadratic band edge dispersion. Because output power generally scales with output area, this increase in output area results in higher possible output powers.

• Research Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: SC0001299
• Assignee: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA)
• Patent Number(s): 8,902,946
• Application Number: 13/771,935
• OSTI ID: 1164669
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY