A passively mode-locked external-cavity semiconductor laser emitting 60-fs pulses
Quarterman, Adrian H., Wilcox, Keith G., Apostolopoulos, Vasilis, Mihoubi, Zakaria, Elsmere, Stephen P., Farrer, Ian, Ritchie, David A. and Tropper, Anne (2009) A passively mode-locked external-cavity semiconductor laser emitting 60-fs pulses. Nature Photonics, 3, (10), 729-731. (doi:10.1038/NPHOTON.2009.216).
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Description/Abstract
Optical pulses of duration a few tens of femtoseconds drive applications from attoscience to metrology, yet femtosecond lasers remain bulky and expensive items based on vibronic crystal or ytterbium-doped silica fibre gain media. Although in principle band-gap-engineered quantum-confined semiconductor materials have significant advantages of gain bandwidth, and spectral versatility, semiconductor lasers have not to date been capable of generating comparably short pulses. Here we describe an optically-pumped InGaAs/GaAs quantum well (QW) laser that is passively mode-locked using an intracavity semiconductor saturable absorber mirror (SESAM) and emits 60-fs pulses at 1037 nm with optical spectrum bandwidth of 20 nm full-width half-maximum (FWHM). In this laser, fast optical Stark self-absorption modulation and strong gain saturation combine to shape pulses on the timescale of carrier-carrier scattering. The cavity contains a stable group of circulating pulses, regularly spaced at an interval fixed by the time over which the saturated gain recovers.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| ISSNs: | 1749-4885 (print) |
| Keywords: | ultrafast semiconductor laser |
| Subjects: | Q Science > QC Physics |
| Divisions: | University Structure - Pre August 2011 > School of Physics and Astronomy |
| Item ID: | 79505 |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Mar 2010 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jun 2011 05:22 |
| Contributors: | Quarterman, Adrian H. (Author) Wilcox, Keith G. (Author) Apostolopoulos, Vasilis (Author) Mihoubi, Zakaria (Author) Elsmere, Stephen P. (Author) Farrer, Ian (Author) Ritchie, David A. (Author) Tropper, Anne (Author) |
| Date: | December 2009 |
| Status: | Published |
| Contact Email Address: | A.C.Tropper@soton.ac.uk |
| URI: | http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/79505 |
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