FREQUENCY RESPONSE OF FIBER RING RESONATOR AND ITS APPLICATION IN DFB LASER WAVELENGTH VARIATION MEASUREMENT

Frequency response of a fiber ring resonator (FRR) composed of an ordinary optical coupler and a segment of optical fiber is theoretically and experimentally investigated. The frequency response equation based oil small-signal modulation is derived and studied in detail. It is shown that the shape of the frequency response curve is very sensitive to the wavelength; as a result, the FRR can be applied to measure the wavelength of a lightwave source with high resolution. With this method, we demonstrate the measurement of tiny changes of wavelength of a DFB laser. (C) 2009 Wiley Periodicals. Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 51 2444-2448, 2009 Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.24608

A mini-staged multi-stacked quantum cascade laser for improved optical and thermal performance

In this paper, a mini-staged multi-stacked quantum cascade laser structure with a designed wavelength of 4.7 mu m is presented. By introducing five 0.5 mu m thick high thermal conductivity InP interbuffer layers, the 60-stages active region core of the quantum cascade laser is divided into six equal parts. Based on simulation, this kind of quantum cascade laser with a 10 mu m ridge width gives nearly circular two-dimensional far-field distribution (FWHM = 32.8 degrees x 29 degrees) and good beam quality parameters M-2 = 1.32 x 1.31 in the fast axis (growth direction) and the slow axis (lateral direction). Due to the enhancement of lateral heat extraction through the interbuffer layers, compared to the conventional structure, a decrease of about 5-6% for the maximum temperature in the active region core of the mini-staged multi-stacked quantum cascade laser with indium-surrounded and gold-electroplated packaging profiles is obtained at all possible dissipated electrical power levels.

Inductively coupled plasma etching in fabrication of 2D InP-based photonic crystals

The authors developed an inductively coupled plasma etching process for the fabrication of hole-type photonic crystals in InP. The etching was performed at 70 degrees C using BCl3/Cl-2 chemistries. A high etch rate of 1.4 mu m/min was obtained for 200 nm diameter holes. The process also yields nearly cylindrical hole shape with a 10.8 aspect ratio and more than 85 degrees straightness of the smooth sidewall. Surface-emitting photonic crystal laser and edge emitting one were demonstrated in the experiments.

Electrically Pumped Room-Temperature Pulsed InGaAsP-Si Hybrid Lasers Based on Metal Bonding

A pulsed InGaAsP-Si hybrid laser is fabricated using metal bonding. A novel structure in which the optical coupling and metal bonding areas are transversely separated is employed to integrate the silicon waveguide with an InGaAsP multi-quantum well distributed feedback structure. When electrically pumped at room temperature, the laser operates with a threshold current density of 2.9 kA/cm(2) and a slope efficiency of 0.02 W/A. The 1542 nm laser output exits mainly from the Si waveguide.

GaAs-Based Metamorphic Long-Wavelength InAs Quantum Dots Grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

A bilayer stacked InAs/GaAs quantum dot structure grown by molecular beam epitaxy on an In0.05Ga0.95As metamorphic buffer is investigated. By introducing a InGaAs Sb cover layer on the upper InAs quantum dots (QDs) layers, the emission wavelength of the QDs is extended successfully to 1.533 mu m at room temperature, and the density of the QDs is in the range of 4 x 10(9) -8 x 10(9) cm(-2). Strong photoluminescence (PL) intensity with a full width at half maximum of 28.6 meV of the PL spectrum shows good optical quality of the bilayer QDs. The growth of bilayer QDs on metamorphic buffers offers a useful way to extend the wavelengths of GaAs-based materials for potential applications in optoelectronic and quantum functional devices.

Development of Swept Frequency Method for Measuring Frequency Response of Photodetectors Based on Harmonic Analysis

We develop a swept frequency method for measuring the frequency response of photodetectors; (PDs) based on harmonic analysis. In this technique, a lightwave from a laser source is modulated by a radio-frequency (RF) signal via a Mach-Zehnder LiNbO3 modulator, and detected by a PD under test. The measured second-order harmonic of the RF signal contains information of the frequency responses and nonlinearities of the RF source, modulator, and PD. The frequency response of the PD alone is obtained by deducting the known frequency responses and nonlinearities of the RF source and modulator. Compared with the conventional swept frequency method, the measurement frequency range can be doubled using the proposed method. Experiment results show a good agreement between the measured results and those obtained using other techniques.

White light emission from ultraviolet laser diode

A phosphor-conversion white light using an InGaN laser diode that emits 405 nm near-ultraviolet (n-UV) light and phosphors that emit in the red/green/blue region when excited by the n-UV light was fabricated. The relationship of the luminous flux and the luminous efficacy of the white light with injection current were discussed. Based on the evaluation method for luminous efficacy of light sources established by the Commission International de I'Eclairage (CIE) and the phosphor used in this experiment, a theoretical analysis of the experiment results and the maximum luminous efficacy of this white light fabrication method were also presented.

Control of the lasing wavelength by a sampled grating in a complex-coupled DFB laser

The lasing wavelength of a complex-coupled DFB laser is controlled by a sampled grating. The key concepts of the approach are to utilize the -1st order (negative first order) reflection of a sampled grating for laser single mode operation, and use conventional holographic exposure combined with the usual photolithography to fabricate the sampled grating. The typical threshold current of the sampled grating based DFB laser is 32 mA, and the optical output is about 10 mW at an injected current of 100 mA. The lasing wavelength of the device is 1.5356 mu m, which is the -1st order wavelength of the sampled grating.

Overall optimization of high-speed semiconductor laser modules

Based on the high frequency techniques such as frequency response measurement, equivalent circuit modeling and packaging parasitics compensation, a comprehensive optimization method for packaging high-speed semiconductor laser module is presented in this paper. The experiments show that the small-signal magnitude frequency response of the TO packaged laser module is superior to that of laser diode in frequencies, and the in-band flatness and the phase-frequency linearity are also improved significantly.

A Bragg-mirror-based semiconductor saturable absorption mirror at 800 nm with low temperature and surface state hybrid absorber

We present a novel 800-nm Bragg-mirror-based semiconductor saturable absorption mirror with low temperature and surface state hybrid absorber, with which we can realize the passive soliton mode locking of a Ti:sapphire laser pumped by 532-nm green laser which produces pulses as short as 37 fs. The reflection bandwidth of the mirror is 30 nm and the pulse frequency is 107 MHz. The average output power is 1.1 W at the pump power of 7.6 W.

Frequency bandwidth estimation of TO packaging techniques for laser modules

Two simple methods for estimating the potential modulation bandwidth of TO packaging technique are presented. The first method is based upon the comparison of the measured frequency responses of the laser diodes and the TO laser modules, and the second is from the equivalent circuit for the test fixture, the TO header, the submount and the bonding wire. It is shown that the TO packaging techniques used in the experiments can potentially achieve a frequency bandwidth of over 10.5 GHz, and the two proposed methods give similar results.

Electrical and optical coupling in an electroabsorption modulator integrated with a DFB laser

Electrical and optical coupling in an electroabsorption (EA) modulator integrated with a distributed feedback (DFB) laser have been investigated. The integrated device is treated as a three-port optoelectronic device with two electrical ports and one optical output port. The scattering parameters of this three-port device have been measured in the designed experiment. The measured results indicate that there exists the electrical coupling between the DFB laser and EA modulator of the integrated light source whenever the current applied to the laser section is below or above the threshold current, and the optical coupling will have stronger influence on the frequency responses than the electrical coupling when the bias current is above the threshold. A small-signal equivalent circuit model for the integrated device is established considering both the electrical and internal optical coupling. Experiments show that the equivalent circuit model is reasonable and the determined element values are correct. Based on the measurement and modeling, the influences of the electrical and optical coupling on the high-frequency responses are investigated and the effective measure to eliminate the additional modulation in the DFB laser are discussed.

A bidirectionall diode-pumped, passively mode-locked Nd : YVO4 ring laser with a low-temperature-grown semiconductor saturable absorber mirror

We report the operation of a bidirectional picosecond pulsed ring Nd:YVO4 laser based on a low-temperature-grown semiconductor saturable absorber mirror. Except for the laser crystal, the six-mirror ring laser cavity has no intra-cavity elements such as focusing lens or mirror. The bidirectional mode locked pluses are obtained at the repetition rate of 117.5 MHz, pulse duration of 81 ps, power of 2 x 200 mW.

Structure tuning of line-defect waveguides based on silicon-on-insulator photonic crystal slabs

We present fabrication and experimental measurement of a series of photonic crystal waveguides. The complete devices consist of an injector taper down from 3 mu m into a triangular-lattice air-hole single-line-defect waveguide with lattice constant from 410nm to 470nm and normalized radius 0.31. We fabricate these devices on a siliconon-insulator substrate and characterize them using a tunable laser source over a wavelength range from 1510nm to 1640nm. A sharp attenuation at photonic crystal waveguide mode edge is observed for most structures. The edge of guided band is shifted about 30nm with the 10nm increase of the lattice constant. We obtain high-efficiency light propagation and broad flat spectrum response of the photonic crystal waveguides.

Rate-equation-based circuit model of high-speed semiconductor lasers

Based oil rare equations of semiconductor laser, a symbolically-defined model for optical transmission system performance evaluation and network characterization in both time- and frequency domains is presented. The steady-state and small-signal characteristics, such as current-photon density curve, current-voltage curve, and input impedance, call be predicted from this model. Two important dynamic characteristics, second-order harmonic distortion and two-tone third-order intermodulation products, are evaluated under different driving conditions. Experiments show that the simulated results agree well with the published data. (c) 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.