Phase-locked photonic wire lasers by π coupling

Khalatpour, Ali; Reno, John L.; Hu, Qing

doi:10.1038/s41566-018-0307-0

Phase-locked photonic wire lasers by π coupling

Journal Article · 10 December 2018 · Nature Photonics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-018-0307-0· OSTI ID:1498768

Khalatpour, Ali ^[1]; Reno, John L. ^[2]; ^[3]

Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States); Univ. of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai, (China)

The term photonic wire laser is now widely used for lasers with transverse dimensions much smaller than the wavelength. As a result, a large fraction of the mode propagates outside the solid core. Here, we propose and demonstrate a scheme to form a coupled cavity by taking advantage of this unique feature of photonic wire lasers. In this scheme, we used quantum cascade lasers with antenna-coupled third-order distributed feedback grating as the platform. Inspired by the chemistry of hybridization, our scheme phase-locks multiple such lasers by π coupling. Alongside the coupled-cavity laser, we demonstrated several performance metrics that are important for various applications in sensing and imaging: a continuous electrical tuning of ~10 GHz at ~3.8 THz (fractional tuning of ~0.26%), a good level of output power (~50–90 mW of continuous-wave power) and tight beam patterns (~10⁰ of beam divergence).

Research Organization:: Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)

DOE Contract Number:: AC04-94AL85000

OSTI ID:: 1498768

Report Number(s):: SAND-2018-4642J; 662744

Journal Information:: Nature Photonics, Vol. 13, Issue 1; ISSN 1749-4885

Publisher:: Nature Publishing Group

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Photonic Engineering Technology for the Development of Terahertz Quantum Cascade Lasers No authors listed Advanced Optical Materials https://doi.org/10.1002/adom.201900573		July 2019
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