Electromagnetically induced distributed feedback intersubband lasers

Abstract

We propose a method to coherently generate uniform and phase-shifted complex-coupled (CC) semiconductor distributed feedback (DFB) lasers based on intersubband transitions in n-doped quantum-well structures. This is done by utilizing infrared-induced coherent optical processes in these structures including resonant enhancement of refractive index of the conduction intersubband transitions and generation of laser-induced transparency and gain without inversion. We show that these coherent phenomena can generate electromagnetically induced gratings where the index and gain/loss perturbations and their relative phases can be manipulated using an infrared laser beam. This allows us to coherently control optical feedback in a waveguide structure, switching from a case where there is no feedback in the absence of the infrared laser to the case where different types of CC optical feedbacks are generated as this field is properly adjusted. These include generation of gain and index perturbations (partly gain-coupled DFB laser), pure index corrugation (index-coupled DFB laser), and loss and index perturbations (loss-coupled DFB laser). We study these feedback mechanisms in the cases where the optically induced gratings are uniform along the cavity or have a /spl pi//2 phase shift. We discuss mode characteristics of such electromagnetically induced DFB intersubband lasers and find out how here the gain- and index-coupled DFB lasers are associated, respectively, with gain without inversion and laser-induced transparency in the conduction intersubband transitions of quantum-well structures.