Tunable ring laser with internal injection seeding and an optically-driven photonic crystal reflector.
Continuous tuning over a 1.6 THz region in the near-infrared (842.5-848.6 nm) has been achieved with a hybrid ring/external cavity laser having a single, optically-driven grating reflector and gain provided by an injection-seeded semiconductor amplifier. Driven at 532 nm and incorporating a photonic crystal with an azobenzene overlayer, the reflector has a peak reflectivity of ~80% and tunes at the rate of 0.024 nm per mW of incident green power. In a departure from conventional ring or external cavity lasers, the frequency selectivity for this system is provided by the passband of the tunable photonic crystal reflector and line narrowing in a high gain amplifier. Sub - 0.1 nm linewidths and amplifier extraction efficiencies above 97% are observed with the reflector tuned to 842.5 nm.
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA.
Jie
J
Zheng
Chun
C
Ge
Clark J
CJ
Wagner
Meng
M
Lu
Brian T
BT
Cunningham
J Darby
JD
Hewitt
J Gary
JG
Eden
D000669:Amplifiers, Electronic; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D003460:Crystallization; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007834:Lasers; D017785:Photons; D012666:Semiconductors