Investigation of anomalously wide wavelength chirping in photonic crystal nanolaser

Abstract

We performed the time-domain measurement of lasing spectrum in a GaInAsP photonic crystal nanolaser. We observed a very wide wavelength chirping up to 10 nm, which can be explained by a strong TO effect. IntroductionPhotonic crystal (PC) nanolasers are extensively studied because of their ultralow threshold, spontaneous emission control, etc. For these lasers, we often observe a very wide spectrum even above threshold under pulsed pumping condition. Regarding on such a spectrum, Yoshie et al. has discussed the possibility of 100 GHz class very fast relaxation oscillation in a nanolaser due to Purcell effect [1]. In this study, we investigated the spectral characteristics of the GaInAsP quantum well PC H0 nanolaser [2] by using time domain measurement, and concluded that the strong thermal chirping occurs due to a large thermal resistance of 1 K/ W order in this device. We confirmed the consistency of results by measuring the temperature characteristics of this nanolaser.