Optical spin manipulation of electrically pumped vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Hövel, S.; Bischoff, Annika; Gerhardt, Nils C.; Hofmann, Martin R.; Ackemann, T.; Kroner, A.; Michalzik, Rainer

doi:10.1063/1.2839381

Cited by 83 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Which material and device properties lead to either chaos polarization switching or stochastic polarization switching is a challenging question in the development of polarizationcontrolled microcavity lasers. Since the underlying physics is a nonlinear carrier spin coupling, one could take advantage of and make a connection with recent works on spin control by carrier injection 45 or variation of the quantum well composition 46 . Secondly, the polarization chaos reported here has frequencies that are not limited by the laser relaxation oscillations, as suggested by the SFM model and as can be expected from the recent works on spin-controlled VCSEL 47 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deterministic polarization chaos from a laser diode

et al. 2012

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Fifty years after the invention of the laser diode and fourty years after the report of the butterfly effect -i.e. the unpredictability of deterministic chaos, it is said that a laser diode behaves like a damped nonlinear oscillator. Hence no chaos can be generated unless with additional forcing or parameter modulation. Here we report the first counter-example of a free-running laser diode generating chaos. The underlying physics is a nonlinear coupling between two elliptically polarized modes in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. We identify chaos in experimental time-series and show theoretically the bifurcations leading to single-and double-scroll attractors with characteristics similar to Lorenz chaos. The reported polarization chaos resembles at first sight a noise-driven mode hopping but shows opposite statistical properties. Our findings open up new research areas that combine the high speed performances of microcavity lasers with controllable and integrated sources of optical chaos.The discovery of deterministic chaos -i.e. the aperiodic deterministic dynamics of a nonlinear system showing sensitivity to initial conditions -has been a major paradigm shift overthrowing two centuries of Laplacian viewpoint of dynamical systems [1][2][3][4][5] . Looking into a system behavior with the use of chaos theory has helped to interpret and control many of such ordered or disordered behaviors in our present day life, such as the bifurcations leading to epilepsy and cancer 6 , the stabilization of cardiac arrhythmias 7 , and the improvement of complex behavioral patterns in robotics 8 .Soon after the invention of the laser, the possibility to observe light chaos raised attention. In 1975, Haken discovered an analogy between the Maxwell-Bloch equations for lasers and the Lorenz equations showing chaos 9 . The Maxwell-Bloch equations are three equations for the field E, the polarization P and the carrier inversion N, each with its own relaxation time. However, while in Lorenz equations the relaxation times of the dynamical variables are of similar order of magnitude, they may take very different values in lasers. If one variable relaxes much faster than the others, this variable is adiabatically eliminated, hence resulting in a reduced number of dynamical equations. Therefore, so-called class A (ex: He-Ne, Ar and Dye), class B (ex: Nd:YAG, CO2 and semiconductor) or class C (ex: NH3) lasers have dynamics governed either by a single equation for the field, two equations for the field and population inversion or the full set of equations, respectively. In class A or class B laser systems chaos cannot be observed unless one adds one or several independent control parameters 10 . Chaos has then been reported in, for example, free-running NH3 lasers 11 , He-Ne lasers with modulation of the external field 12 , CO2

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deterministic polarization chaos from a laser diode

et al. 2012

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“…7(c) and 7(d). For this case, the emitted light S − exceeds that with the opposite helicity, S + , there is a gain asymmetry, 5,6,8 another consequence of the polarizationdependent gain. The zero gain is attained at µ C+ − µ V for spin up (red curves) and µ C− − µ V for spin down transitions (blue curves).…”

Section: Understanding the Spin-dependent Gainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was experimentally demonstrated that injecting spinpolarized carriers already leads to noticeable differences in the steady-state operation. [4][5][6] The onset of lasing is attained for a smaller injection, lasing threshold reduction, while the optical gain differs for different polarizations of light, leading to gain asymmetry, also referred to as gain anisotropy. 5,6,8 In the stimulated emission, even a small carrier polarization in the active region can be greatly amplified and lead to the emission of completely circularly polarized emitted light, an example of a very efficient spin filtering.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward high-frequency operation of spin lasers

Faria

Lee

et al. 2015

Phys. Rev. B

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Injecting spin-polarized carriers into semiconductor lasers provides important opportunities to extend what is known about spintronic devices, as well as to overcome many limitations of conventional (spin-unpolarized) lasers. By developing a microscopic model of spin-dependent optical gain derived from an accurate electronic structure in a quantum well-based laser, we study how its operation properties can be modified by spin-polarized carriers, carrier density, and resonant cavity design. We reveal that by applying an uniaxial strain it is possible to attain a large birefringence. While such birefringence is viewed as detrimental in conventional lasers, it could enable fast polarization oscillations of the emitted light in spin-lasers which can be exploited for optical communication and high-performance interconnects. The resulting oscillation frequency (> 200 GHz) would significantly exceed the frequency range possible in conventional lasers.

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“…As a specific example of spintronic devices, spin-polarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have attracted considerable attention [5][6][7][8][9]. In such lasers, the output polarization is controlled by injecting spin-polarized electrons into the laser active region.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stability and bifurcation analysis of spin-polarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Susanto

Cemlyn

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. A

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A detailed stability and bifurcation analysis of spin-polarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) is presented. We consider both steady-state and dynamical regimes. In the case of steady-state operation, we carry out a small-signal (asymptotic) stability analysis of the steady-state solutions for a representative set of spin-VCSEL parameters. Compared with full numerical simulation, we show this produces surprisingly accurate results over the whole range of pump ellipticity, and spin-VCSEL bias up to 1.5 times the threshold. We then combine direct numerical integration of the extended spin-flip model and standard continuation technique to examine the underlying dynamics. We find that the spin VCSEL undergoes a period-doubling or quasiperiodic route to chaos as either the pump magnitude or polarization ellipticity is varied. Moreover, we find that different dynamical states can coexist in a finite interval of pump intensity, and observe a hysteresis loop whose width is tunable via the pump polarization. Finally we report a comparison of stability maps in the plane of the pump polarization against pump magnitude produced by categorizing the dynamic output of a spin VCSEL from time-domain simulations, against supercritical bifurcation curves obtained by the standard continuation package AUTO. This helps us better understand the underlying dynamics of the spin VCSELs.

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Optical spin manipulation of electrically pumped vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

Cited by 83 publications

References 19 publications

Deterministic polarization chaos from a laser diode

Deterministic polarization chaos from a laser diode

Toward high-frequency operation of spin lasers

Stability and bifurcation analysis of spin-polarized vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers

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