515 research outputs found
Quantum-well capture and interwell transport in semiconductor active layers
The dynamics of electrons and holes in multiquantum-well semiconductor gain media involves several different transport processes, such as diffusion and drift across the barrier region, as well as capture and escape transitions between the bound and the unbound states of the quantum wells. In addition to their fundamental interest, these processes are important because of their implications for the dynamic properties of multiquantum-well lasers and optical amplifiers. Experimentally, they have been studied with several time-domain optical techniques having (sub)picosecond resolution and, more recently, with frequency-domain techniques based on laser modulation measurements. This article gives a brief review of the work done in this area and then presents in detail a frequency-domain approach, four-wave mixing spectroscopy in semiconductor optical amplifiers, to investigate intrinsic capture and interwell equilibration. This technique allows one to extend the device modulation frequency to several hundreds of gigahertz, thus providing the required time resolution, and can be configured to isolate and directly study the transport process of interest
Wavelength conversion at 10 Gb/s by four-wave mixing over a 30-nm interval
We show that the use of a long semiconductor optical amplifier increases the error-free conversion interval of a four-wave mixing (FWM)-based wavelength converter. 30-nm wavelength down-conversion and 15-nm up-conversion have been obtained at 10 Gb/s. This result is a significant improvement over the previous best performance of a FWM-based wavelength converter and suggests that the full erbium-doped fiber amplifier bandwidth can be covered with FWM wavelength converters
30-nm wavelength conversion at 10 Gbit/s by four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier
Four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) is currently the only available strictly transparent wavelength-conversion technique, which is not penalized by phase matching. The span of the conversion is limited primarily by conversion efficiency and signal-to-noise (SNR) issues, both of which are expected to improve with the use of longer SOAs. In this paper, we demonstrate significantly enhanced performance of long converters in a system experiment at 10 Gbit/s. The experiment shows for the first time, to our knowledge, that FWM wavelength down-conversions can span the full gain bandwidth of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers
Stable mode-locked pulses from mid-infrared semiconductor lasers
We report the unequivocal demonstration of mid-infrared mode-locked pulses
from a semiconductor laser. The train of short pulses was generated by actively
modulating the current and hence the optical gain in a small section of an
edge-emitting quantum cascade laser (QCL). Pulses with pulse duration at
full-width-at-half-maximum of about 3 ps and energy of 0.5 pJ were
characterized using a second-order interferometric autocorrelation technique
based on a nonlinear quantum well infrared photodetector. The mode-locking
dynamics in the QCLs was modelled and simulated based on Maxwell-Bloch
equations in an open two-level system. We anticipate our results to be a
significant step toward a compact, electrically-pumped source generating
ultrashort light pulses in the mid-infrared and terahertz spectral ranges.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure
Four-wave mixing mediated by the capture of electrons and holes in semiconductor quantum-well laser amplifiers
Measurement of the stimulated carrier lifetime in semiconductor optical amplifiers by four-wave mixing of polarized ASE noise
Kinetic Inductance Detectors for the OLIMPO experiment: design and pre-flight characterization
We designed, fabricated, and characterized four arrays of horn--coupled,
lumped element kinetic inductance detectors (LEKIDs), optimized to work in the
spectral bands of the balloon-borne OLIMPO experiment. OLIMPO is a 2.6 m
aperture telescope, aimed at spectroscopic measurements of the
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) effect. OLIMPO will also validate the LEKID technology
in a representative space environment. The corrected focal plane is filled with
diffraction limited horn-coupled KID arrays, with 19, 37, 23, 41 active pixels
respectively at 150, 250, 350, and 460GHz. Here we report on the full
electrical and optical characterization performed on these detector arrays
before the flight. In a dark laboratory cryostat, we measured the resonator
electrical parameters, such as the quality factors and the electrical
responsivities, at a base temperature of 300mK. The measured average
resonator s are 1.7, 7.0, 1.0, and
1.0 for the 150, 250, 350, and 460GHz arrays, respectively.
The average electrical phase responsivities on resonance are 1.4rad/pW,
1.5rad/pW, 2.1rad/pW, and 2.1rad/pW; the electrical noise
equivalent powers are 45, 160,
80, and 140, at 12 Hz. In the OLIMPO
cryostat, we measured the optical properties, such as the noise equivalent
temperatures (NET) and the spectral responses. The measured NETs are
, , ,
and , at 12 Hz; under 78, 88, 92, and 90 mK
Rayleigh-Jeans blackbody load changes respectively for the 150, 250, 350, and
460 GHz arrays. The spectral responses were characterized with the OLIMPO
differential Fourier transform spectrometer (DFTS) up to THz frequencies, with
a resolution of 1.8 GHz.Comment: Published on JCA
Folded-path self-pumped wavelength converter based on four-wave mixing in a semiconductor optical amplifier
A systematic review and meta-analysis of germline BRCA mutations in pancreatic cancer patients identifies global and racial disparities in access to genetic testing
Background: Germline BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations (gBRCAm) can inform pancreatic cancer (PC) risk and treatment but most of the available information is derived from white patients. The ethnic and geographic variability of gBRCAm prevalence and of germline BRCA (gBRCA) testing uptake in PC globally is largely unknown. Materials and methods: We carried out a systematic review and prevalence meta-analysis of gBRCA testing and gBRCAm prevalence in PC patients stratified by ethnicity. The main outcome was the distribution of gBRCA testing uptake across diverse populations worldwide. Secondary outcomes included: geographic distribution of gBRCA testing uptake, temporal analysis of gBRCA testing uptake in ethnic groups, and pooled proportion of gBRCAm stratified by ethnicity. The study is listed under PROSPERO registration number #CRD42022311769. Results: A total of 51 studies with 16 621 patients were included. Twelve of the studies (23.5%) enrolled white patients only, 10 Asians only (19.6%), and 29 (56.9%) included mixed populations. The pooled prevalence of white, Asian, African American, and Hispanic patients tested per study was 88.7%, 34.8%, 3.6%, and 5.2%, respectively. The majority of included studies were from high-income countries (HICs) (64; 91.2%). Temporal analysis showed a significant increase only in white and Asians patients tested from 2000 to present (P < 0.001). The pooled prevalence of gBRCAm was: 3.3% in white, 1.7% in Asian, and negligible (<0.3%) in African American and Hispanic patients. Conclusions: Data on gBRCA testing and gBRCAm in PC derive mostly from white patients and from HICs. This limits the interpretation of gBRCAm for treating PC across diverse populations and implies substantial global and racial disparities in access to BRCA testing in PC
A comprehensive model of gain recovery due to unipolar electron transport after a short optical pulse in quantum cascade lasers
We have developed a comprehensive model of gain recovery due to unipolar electron transport after a short optical pulse in quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) that takes into account all the participating energy levels, including the continuum, in a device. This work takes into account the incoherent scattering of electrons from one energy level to another and quantum coherent tunneling from an injector level to an active region level or vice versa. In contrast to the prior work that only considered transitions to and from a limited number of bound levels, this work include transitions between all bound levels and between the bound energy levels and the continuum. We simulated an experiment of S. Liu et al., in which 438-pJ femtosecond optical pulses at the device’s lasing wavelength were injected into an In0:653Ga0:348As=In0:310Al0:690As QCL structure; we found that approximately 1% of the electrons in the bound energy levels will be excited into the continuum by a pulse and that the probability that these electrons will be scattered back into bound energy levels is negligible, 104. The gain recovery that is predicted is not consistent with the experiments, indicating that one or more phenomena besides unipolar electron transport in response to a short optical pulse play an important role in the observed gain recovery
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