Novel semiconductor based broadly tunable light sources

The development of compact and low-cost coherent sources in visible and infrared wavelength range can provide indispensible tools for a variety of scientific, technological and industrial applications. Great progress over the last years in material science, crystal growth and semiconductor material processing in combination with recent advances in some of the more traditional technologies, in particular nonlinear frequency conversion and parametric sources, have led to the realisation of a new generation of laser sources. Furthermore, the advent of a new generation of quasi-phase-matched, waveguided and semiconductor nonlinear materials together with novel semiconductor lasers have led to the development of new frequency conversion and parametric sources with previously unattainable performance capabilities. The research described in this thesis relates to the development and characterisation of novel semiconductor based laser sources tunable in the broad spectral ranges which are unattainable for conventional lasers due to a lack of suitable laser gain materials. In the first part of the thesis the subject matter is concerned with the direct emission from laser devices. In particular, a broadly tunable InGaAs/InP strained multi-quantum well external cavity diode laser, operating in the spectral range of 1494 nm – 1667 nm with a maximum CW output power in excess of 81 mW and side-mode suppression ratio higher than 50 dB is demonstrated. This represents the highest output power and side-mode suppression ratio ever to be generated in this spectral region. A record broadly tunable high-power external cavity InAs/GaAs quantum-dot diode laser with a tuning range of 202 nm (1122 nm - 1324 nm), a maximum output power of 480 mW and a side-mode suppression ratio greater than 45 dB, is also demonstrated. This represents a promising achievement for the development of a high-power fast swept tunable laser and compact nonlinear frequency generation schemes for the green-yellow-orange-red spectral range. The second part of the thesis relates to induced nonlinear processes, focusing on frequency doubling and optical parametric oscillation. In particular, an all-room-temperature CW second harmonic generation at 612.9 nm and 591.5 nm in periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate waveguides pumped by a broadly-tunable quantum-dot external cavity diode laser with a conversion efficiency of 10.5% and 7.9%, respectively, is demonstrated. For the first time, a green-to-red tunable laser source with tunability of over 60 nm (567.7 nm – 629.1 nm) based on frequency doubling in a single periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate waveguide pumped by a single broadly-tunable quantum dot laser is demonstrated. These results are an important step towards a compact tunable coherent visible light source, operating at room temperature. The possibility of nonlinear frequency conversion in orientation-patterned GaAs waveguides is also investigated. The technology of low-loss periodically poled GaAs waveguided crystals is developed and such crystals are fabricated. Second harmonic generation at 1621 nm in low-loss periodically poled GaAs waveguide is demonstrated. An optical parametric oscillator system used as the pump source for GaAs devices and based on the periodically poled 5 mol% MgO-doped Congruent Lithium Niobate crystal, generating light in the wavelength range between 1430 nm and 4157 nm, is presented. The obtained results show a great promise for realisation of efficient quasi-phase-matched optical parametric oscillator devices based on orientation-patterned GaAs waveguides, which enables the extending generated wavelength up to 16 µm.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Compact all-quantum-dot-based tunable THz laser source

We demonstrate an ultracompact, room temperature, tunable terahertz (THz) generating laser source based on difference-frequency-driven photomixing in a coplanar stripline InAs/GaAs quantum-dot (QD) antenna pumped by a broadly tunable, high power, continuous wave InAs/GaAs QD laser diode in the double-grating quasi-Littrow configuration. The dual-wavelength QD laser operating in the 1150- 1301 nm wavelength region with a maximum output power of 280 mW and with tunable difference-frequency (277 GHz to 30 THz) was used to achieve tunable THz generation in the QD antenna with a photoconductive gap of 50 μm. The best THz output performance was observed at pump wavelengths around the first excited state of the InAs/GaAs QDs (∼1160 nm), where a maximum output power of 0.6 nW at 0.83 THz was demonstrated

Photoelectric Properties of InAs/GaAs Quantum Dot Photoconductive Antenna Wafers

In this paper, the study of the photoconductivity in self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dot photoconductive antenna in the wavelength region between 1140 nm and 1250 nm at temperatures ranging from 13 to 400 K is reported. These antennas are aimed to work in conjunction with quantum dot semiconductor lasers to effectively generate pulsed and continuous wave terahertz radiation. For the efficient operation, laser wavelengths providing the highest photocurrent should be determined. To study the interband photoconductivity of quantum dot photoconductive antennas, at room and cryogenic temperatures, we employed a broadly-tunable InAs/GaAs quantum dot based laser providing a coherent pump with power exceeding 20 mW over a 100 nm tunability range. The quantum dot antenna structure revealed sharp temperature-dependent photoconductivity peaks in the vicinity of wavelengths, corresponding to the ground and excited states of InAs/GaAs quantum dots. The ground state photoconductivity peak vanishes with a temperature drop, whereas the excited state peak persists. We associate this effect with different mechanisms of photoexcited carriers extraction from quantum dots

Conical refraction of a high-M2 laser beam

We report on experiments with conical refraction of laser beams possessing a high beam propagation parameter M2. With beam propagation parameter values M2=3 and M2=5, unusual Lloyd's distributions with correspondingly three and five dark rings were observed. In order to explain this phenomenon, we extend the dual-cone model of the conical refraction that describes it as a product of interference of two cones that converge and diverge behind the exit facet of the crystal. In the extended model, these converging/diverging cones are represented as the cone-shaped quasi-Gaussian beams possessing the M2 parameter of an original beam. In this formalism, a beam-waist of these cone-shaped beams is proportional to the M2 value and defines the area of their interference which is a width of the Lloyd's ring. Therefore, the number of dark rings in the Lloyd distribution is defined by the M2 value and can be much greater than unity. The results of the numerical simulations within the extended dual-cone model are in excellent agreement with the experiment

Tunable single- and dual-wavelength SHG from diode-pumped PPKTP waveguides

A compact, all-room-temperature, widely tunable, continuous wave laser source in the green spectral region (502.1–544.2 nm) with a maximum output power of 14.7 mW is demonstrated. This was made possible by utilizing second-harmonic generation (SHG) in a periodically poled potassium titanyl phosphate (PPKTP) crystal waveguide pumped by a quantum-well external-cavity fiber-coupled diode laser and exploiting the multimode-matching approach in nonlinear crystal waveguides. The dual-wavelength SHG in the wavelength region between 505.4 and 537.7 nm (with a wavelength difference ranging from 1.8 to 32.3 nm) and sum-frequency generation in a PPKTP waveguide is also demonstrated

Generation of tunable visible picosecond pulses by frequency-doubling of a quantum-dot laser in a PPKTP waveguide

We demonstrate a compact all-room-temperature picosecond laser source broadly tunable in the visible spectral region between 600 nm and 627 nm. The tunable radiation is obtained by frequency-doubling of a tunable quantum-dot external-cavity mode-locked laser in a periodically-poled KTP multimode waveguide. In this case, utilization of a significant difference in the effective refractive indices of the high- and low-order modes enables to match the period of poling in a very broad wavelength range. The maximum achieved second harmonic output peak power is 3.25 mW at 613 nm for 71.43 mW of launched pump peak power at 1226 nm, resulting in conversion efficiency of 4.55%

High-power operation of quantum-dot semiconductor disk laser at 1180 nm

In this letter, we report on a high-power operation of an optically pumped quantum-dot semiconductor disk laser designed for emission at 1180 nm. As a consequence of the optimization of the operation conditions, a record-high continuous-wave output power exceeding 7 W is obtained for this wavelength at a heat-sink temperature of 2 °C. A wavelength tuning over a range of 37 nm is achieved using a birefringent filter inside the cavity