Extreme events in quantum cascade lasers

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) operating under external optical feedback exhibit extreme pulses. These events can be triggered by adding small amplitude periodic modulation, with the highest success rate for the case of a pulse-up excitation. These findings broaden the potential applications for QCLs, which have already been proven to be a semiconductor laser of interest for spectroscopic applications and countermeasure systems. The ability to trigger extreme events paves the way for optical neuron-like systems where information propagates as a result of high intensity bursts.

Chaos Bandwidth in Mid-infrared Quantum Cascade Photonic Devices with Interband and Intersubband Transitions

“…External optical feedback is a common tool to display non-linear dynamics in semiconductor lasers [6] and the experimental setup we used is similar to the one deployed in our previous efforts [5]. The laser under study is mounted within a Newport LDM-4872 socket and a mid-IR lens allows collimating the laser beam.…”

“…The versatility of these sources makes them desirable for a wide range of applications, from free-space communications in one of the transparency windows of the atmosphere (3-5 µm) [3] to mid-IR frequency combs [4]. When subjected to external optical feedback, QCLs exhibit several non-linear dynamics encountered in other semiconductor lasers: low-frequency fluctuations, chaos, extreme events [5] . .…”

A review of recent results of mid-infrared quantum cascade photonic devices operating under external optical control

“…The concept of differentiator, that is commonly used in electronics circuits [142], is relevant to perform all-optical edge detection [143,144]. This achievement paves the way toward complex photonics at mid-IR wavelength and complements the recent experimental efforts about basic optical neurons in QCLs [145]. The explanation for the slave's behavior is the object of ongoing work but to the best of our knowledge, this differentiator feature has not yet been explored theoretically and experimentally in other semiconductor lasers such as laser diodes and VCSELs.…”

Mid-infrared free-space cryptosystem

“…2, the optical feedback process seems to magnify the pulse response. This could be linked to the extreme event phenomenon in QCLs [30], where electrical bursts with specific properties are strongly enhanced in a non-linear process. The correlation between consecutive sequences is also increased, as underlined by the spikes at ± 100 and ± 200 µs in Fig.…”