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).
@article{osti_1498768,
author = {Khalatpour, Ali and Reno, John L. and Hu, Qing},
title = {Phase-locked photonic wire lasers by π coupling},
annote = {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).},
doi = {10.1038/s41566-018-0307-0},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1498768},
journal = {Nature Photonics},
issn = {ISSN 1749-4885},
number = {1},
volume = {13},
place = {United States},
publisher = {Nature Publishing Group},
year = {2018},
month = {12}}
Infrared and Millimeter Waves, Conference Digest of the 2004 Joint 29th International Conference on 2004 and 12th International Conference on Terahertz Electronics, 2004.https://doi.org/10.1109/ICIMW.2004.1422348