Semiconductor lasers subject to optical feedback usually produce rich nonlinear dynamics beyond a critical feedback level. Below the critical feedback level, the spectral linewidth is either reduced or increased by the feedback depending on the feedback phase. For common quantum well lasers, the critical feedback level is usually below -30 dB, and the spectral linewidth is narrowed by a factor of 2 or 3 for the optimal feedback phase. Interband cascade lasers (ICLs) are power-efficient mid-infrared laser sources. This work experimentally demonstrates that the optical feedback significantly narrows the spectral linewidth of an ICL from 529 kHz down to 27 kHz, without any feedback phase control. The ICL under study is a single-mode distributed feedback laser. The optical feedback is provided by a gold mirror, which is placed 40 cm away from the ICL facet. The spectral linewidth of the ICL is extracted from the measurement of the frequency noise power spectral density. The free-running ICL exhibits a lasing threshold of 24 mA, and a lasing wavelength around 3.38 μm. When the lCL is biased at 53.9 mA, the extracted spectral linewidth of the free-running ICL is 529 kHz, for an observation time of 1 ms. When the ICL is subject to weak optical feedback (feedback ratio<-30 dB), the spectral linewidth is either increased or decreased depending on the feedback phase. However, for moderate optical feedback (feedback ratios from -30 dB up to -13 dB), the spectral linewidth declines with feedback ratio, and is always smaller than the free-running linewidth. The minimum linewidth reaches down to only 27 kHz, which is about 20 times smaller than the free-running one. Beyond the critical level of about -13 dB, the spectral linewidth re-broadens due to the existence of nonlinear pulse oscillations.
Semiconductor lasers subject to optical injection exhibit both stable locking regime and unstable locking regime. Inside the stable locking regime, various laser performances can be improved. Outside the stable locking regime, the lasers produce rich nonlinear dynamics. However, very few dynamics are known when the QCLs are subject to optical injection. This work reports the measured dynamics of a QCL subject to optical injection, both within and outside the stable locking regime. In the experimental setup, the master QCL is injected into the slave QCL through a unidirectional isolator. Both QCLs are single-mode distributed feedback lasers, and emit around 2182.5 /cm. The lasing threshold of the master laser is 385 mA and the threshold of the slave laser is 425 mA. The detuning frequency between the two lasers is adjusted by tuning the pump current of the master laser, and the frequency tunability is -776.5 MHz/mA. In the experiment, the slave laser is fixed at 435 mA with an output power of 2.9 mW. The slave laser is stably locked by the master laser when decreasing the pump current from 429.2 mA down to 426.1 mA, which corresponds to a detuning frequency from -0.85 GHz up to +1.42 GHz. Meanwhile, the injection ratio slightly reduces from 4.24 dB down to 4.02 dB. Therefore, the stable locking frequency range is as large as 2.27 GHz. Within the stable locking regime, the optical power rises almost linearly with increasing detuning frequency. Interestingly, the injection-locking boundary exhibits clear hysteresis phenomenon when increasing the pump current of the master laser, where the stable-locking range shrinks to 1.03 GHz. Outside the stable-locking regime, the QCL mostly produces period-one oscillations. Besides, we also observe quasi-periodic oscillations and spiking pulsations, although the occurrence of both dynamics is rare.
Semiconductor lasers subject to optical feedback usually produce rich nonlinear dynamics, including periodic oscillations, quasi-periodic oscillations, and chaotic oscillations. However, quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are highly stable against normal optical feedback, owing to the intersubband transition with ultrashort carrier lifetime and the near zero linewidth broadening factor. This work numerically shows that tilted optical feedback from a misaligned reflection mirror triggers the generation of nonlinear dynamics from QCLs, which is in good agreement with our previous experimental observations. The physical mechanism is attributed to the non-degeneration of the odd-order round-trip feedback path with the even-order ones.
Gas sensing based on modulation spectroscopy requires sinusoidal modulation of the laser sources. This work proposes a modulation scheme for quantum cascade lasers, using the period-one (P1) oscillations. The P1 oscillations are introduced by the tilted optical feedback. Although the optical linewidth of the laser is around 15.0 MHz, the beat-note electrical linewidth of the modulation is less than 2.0 kHz, which suggests that the optical sidebands induced by the P1 oscillations are highly coherent with the main optical mode. In addition, the modulation frequency can be simply tunned by adjusting the feedback length, and the modulation depth of the optical signal is in the range of 1.0 % to 3.0 %. In contrast to the direct modulation scheme and the external modulation scheme, the proposed P1 modulation method does not require any radio-frequency electronics.
This work shows that optical feedback can either stabilize or destabilize quantum cascade lasers, depending on the alignment of the reflection mirror. On one hand, the laser is insensitive to the common well-aligned optical feedback, and the relative intensity noise has little change against optical feedback. Meanwhile, strong optical feedback well stabilizes the laser frequency and significantly narrows the spectral linewidth, instead of evoking chaotic oscillations. On the other hand, misaligned optical feedback with a tilt angle of the reflection mirror triggers multiple nonlinear dynamics including periodic oscillations, quasi-periodic oscillations, and low-frequency oscillations.
This work theoretically investigates the optical noise characteristics of mutually-coupled quantum cascade lasers, which is achieved through the small-signal analysis of a set of rate equations with Langevin noise sources. It is shown that the stable locking range of the mutually-coupled lasers is on the order of several GHz. Within the stable locking range, the inphase mutual injection hardly changes the relative intensity noise of the lasers. In contrast, the frequency noise and the spectral linewidth of the coupled lasers can be reduced by about 10 dB.
Time-delay reservoir computer (RC) based on semiconductor lasers provides a simple hardware implementation of the recurrent neural network. However, the data processing speed is limited by the length of the feedback loop. This work demonstrates a parallel RC scheme based on the wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technique. This scheme is implemented on a Fabry-Perot quantum dot laser with multimode emission. It is shown that the four-channel WDM RC exhibits a better performance over the single-channel one, with the same number of virtual neurons. Meanwhile, the RC is accelerated by four times, owing to the shorter delay time. In addition, we show that the cross-gain saturation effect between the multimodes plays a crucial role on the RC performance.
Optical feedback usually gives rise to rich nonlinear dynamics in semiconductor lasers, which are interesting for both physics and applications. In comparison with common quantum well lasers, the laser emission of mid-infrared interband cascade lasers relies on the interband transition of type-II quantum wells. This work experimentally explores the nonlinear dynamics of an interband cascade laser subject to optical feedback. It is found that the interband cascade laser exhibits both periodic oscillations and fully-developed chaos at different feedback ratios.
The spectral linewidth of quantum cascade lasers (QCL) is a few megahertz, while the intrinsic linewidth is only a few hundred hertz. This work proposes to employ strong optical feedback to narrow the linewidth of QCLs without any phase control. It is found that strong optical feedback always reduces the linewidth for any feedback phase. In addition, we experimentally show that the spectral linewidth of the measured QCL is reduced from 7.6 MHz down to 107 kHz by optical feedback with a feedback ratio of -3.8 dB. The corresponding frequency noise below 100 kHz Fourier frequency is reduced by about 40 dB.
Interband cascade laser (ICL) is a power-efficient mid-infrared semiconductor laser source. Linewidth broadening factor (LBF) is a crucial parameter of semiconductor lasers. This work investigates the sub-threshold LBF of a continuous wave ICL operated at room temperature, using the Hakki-Paoli method. The carrier-induced gain variation of the ICL is extracted from the amplified spontaneous emission spectrum. The refractive index variation is determined by the optical wavelength change, and the thermal effect is carefully removed. It shows that the LBF of the ICL around the gain peak ranges from 1.1 to 1.4, depending on the operation wavelength.
In this work, we theoretically investigate the relative intensity noise (RIN) properties of quantum dot (QD) lasers through a rate equation model including the Langevin noises and the contribution from the off resonance energy levels. It is shown that the carrier noise significantly enhances the RIN which can be further reduced by properly controlling the energy separation between the first excited and the ground states. In addition, simulations also unveil that the RIN of QD lasers is rather temperature independent which is of prime importance for the development of power efficient light sources. Overall, these results indicate that QD lasers are excellent candidates for the realization of ultra-low noise oscillators hence being advantageous for fiber optics communication networks, short reach optical interconnects and integrated photonics systems.
This work theoretically investigates the four-level pulse-amplitude modulation characteristics of quantum dot lasers subject to optical injection. The rate equation model takes into account carrier dynamics in the carrier reservoir, in the excited state, and in the ground state, as well as photon dynamics and phase dynamics of the electric field. It is found that the optical injection significantly improves the eye diagram quality through suppressing the relaxation oscillation, while the extinction ratio is reduced as well. In addition, both the adiabatic chirp and the transient chirp of the signal are substantially suppressed.
In this paper, we investigate the temperature dependence of spectral linewidth of InAs/InP quantum dot distributed feedback lasers. In comparison with their quantum well counterparts, results show that quantum dot lasers have spectral linewidths rather insensitive to the temperature with minimum values below 200 kHz in the range of 283K to 303K. The experimental results are also well confirmed by numerical simulations. Overall, this work shows that quantum dot lasers are excellent candidates for various applications such as coherent communication systems, high-resolution spectroscopy, high purity photonic microwave generation and on-chip atomic clocks.
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