Single-mode laser action in quantum cascade lasers with spiral-shaped chaotic resonators

Audet, Ross M.; Belkin, Mikhail; Fan, Jonathan A.; Lee, Benjamin G.; Lin, Kai; Capasso, Federico; Narimanov, Evgenii E.; Bour, D. P.; Corzine, S.; Zhu, Jintian; Höfler, G. E.

doi:10.1063/1.2784290

Cited by 41 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Experimentally emission in approximately single direction was obtained by pumping optically or electrically only the edge of the cavity (Chern et al, 2003;Kneissl et al, 2004). Later studies showed that uniform pumping of the entire cavity does not produce directional output (Audet et al, 2007;. Further analysis revealed that pairs of CW and CCW modes do not exist in the spiral (Wiersig, 2008;.…”

Section: A Spiral-shaped Cavitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dielectric microcavities: Model systems for wave chaos and non-Hermitian physics

2015

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Section: A Spiral-shaped Cavitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Dielectric microcavities: Model systems for wave chaos and non-Hermitian physics

2015

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“…One promising route to achieve this was the modification of the original circular boundary that, due to the inherent rotational symmetry, yields a uniform far field. Spiral-shaped microcavity laser [3] were one of the first geometries successfully tested in many experiments [4][5][6][7][8], and conditions for unidirectional light emission from spiral-shaped microcavities were studied in detail [9][10][11]. A triangular shape has been proposed especially for small lasers [12,13].…”

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Designing coupled microcavity lasers for high-Q modes with unidirectional light emission

Ryu

Hentschel

2011

Opt. Lett.

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We design coupled optical microcavities and report directional light emission from high-Q modes for a broad range of refractive indices. The system consists of a circular cavity that provides a high-Q mode in form of a whispering gallery mode, whereas an adjacent deformed microcavity plays the role of a waveguide or collimator of the light transmitted from the circular cavity. As a result of this very simple, yet robust, concept we obtain high-Q modes with promising directional emission characteristics. No information about phase space is required, and the proposed scheme can be easily realized in experiments. c 2018 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 130.3120, 140.3410, 140.3945, 140.4780. Microcavity lasers have attracted much attention because of their high potential in a number of applications related to high-density optoelectric integration [1,2]. An important objective is the design of microlasers with unidirectional emission properties. One promising route to achieve this was the modification of the original circular boundary that, due to the inherent rotational symmetry, yields a uniform far field. Spiral-shaped microcavity laser [3] were one of the first geometries successfully tested in many experiments [4][5][6][7][8], and conditions for unidirectional light emission from spiral-shaped microcavities were studied in detail [9][10][11]. A triangular shape has been proposed especially for small lasers [12,13]. In annular microcavities, high-Q modes with unidirectional light emission were achieved through a mechanism that couples a uniform emitting high-Q whispering gallery mode (WGM) to a directional emitting low-Q mode by means of mode hybridization near avoided resonance crossings [14]. Recently, Limaçon-shaped microcavity lasers were proposed [15] as source for high-Q modes with unidirectional light emission working for a substantial range of geometries and material parameters, and many experimental demonstrations of unidirectional light emission from those lasers were reported soon after [16][17][18][19]. Optimization of the system geometry involved the study of the so-called unstable manifold that governs the chaotic ray dynamics [20][21][22][23].Besides the single chaotic microcavity lasers with geometry controlled far-field characteristics, two-disk microcavity lasers have been shown to also produce high-Q modes with unidirectional light emission [24]. These lasers are not practical because there are many nearly degenerate modes with, however, opposite directions of light emission, and moreover, the emission directions depend sensitively on the material parameters such as small variations in the refractive indices.In this Letter we report a scheme that overcomes the drawbacks of two-disk microcavities and the limited range of working refractive indices for Limaçon-shaped devices, yet keeping their robustness. Our design couples a circular cavity with a deformed disk, cf. Figure 1(a) shows our system which consists of two cavities with different boundary shapes: a circular cavity of radius ...

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“…Among these, electrically pumped semiconductor microcavity lasers such as stadiumshaped lasers, 5 bow-tie lasers, 6 and spiral-shaped lasers [7][8][9] are of special interests for potential applications and as tool to study ray and wave chaos. Up to now, however, very few studies of microcavities in both experiment 10 and theory 11,12 have shown promise of achieving directional emission while having high quality-factor ͑Q-factor͒ modes in the cavity.…”

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Directional emission and universal far-field behavior from semiconductor lasers with limaçon-shaped microcavity

Yan

Wang

Diehl

et al. 2009

Applied Physics Letters

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111

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We report experimental demonstration of directional light emission from limaçon-shaped microcavity semiconductor lasers. Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) emitting at λ≈10 μm are used as a model system. Both ray optics and wave simulations show that for deformations in the range 0.37<ε<0.43, these microcavities support high quality-factor whispering gallerylike modes while having a directional far-field profile with a beam divergence θ∥≈30° in the plane of the cavity. The measured far-field profiles are in good agreement with simulations. While the measured spectra show a transition from whispering gallerylike modes to a more complex mode structure at higher pumping currents, the far field is insensitive to the pumping current demonstrating the predicted “universal far-field behavior” of this class of chaotic resonators. Due to their relatively high quality factor, our microcavity lasers display reduced threshold current densities compared to conventional ridge lasers with millimeter-long cavities. The performance of the limaçon-shaped QCLs is robust with respect to variations of the deformation near its optimum value of ε=0.40.

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Single-mode laser action in quantum cascade lasers with spiral-shaped chaotic resonators

Cited by 41 publications

References 11 publications

Dielectric microcavities: Model systems for wave chaos and non-Hermitian physics

Dielectric microcavities: Model systems for wave chaos and non-Hermitian physics

Designing coupled microcavity lasers for high-Q modes with unidirectional light emission

Directional emission and universal far-field behavior from semiconductor lasers with limaçon-shaped microcavity

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