High continuous-wave power surface emitting terahertz lasers integrated with multimode interferometer

Abstract

Distributed feedback (DFB) surface emitting semiconductor laser realizes power extraction by periodic photonic heterostructure. A direct method to increase the output power is scaling up the area of active region, however, the length of the device is restricted by the coupling strength of the DFB grating. Herein we develop a high-power single-mode surface emitting scheme by monolithically integrating second-order DFB terahertz quantum cascade laser and a multimode interferometer, which can significantly enhance the optical power by increasing photon density and altering field distribution in the grating region. Application of this concept leads to high continuous-wave (CW) surface emitting power of 55 mW, with single-lobed far-field pattern and single-mode operation at about 3.9 THz, which is among the best reported results. Such an integrated scheme can be combined with any one-dimensional photonic heterostructure, which has great potential in further improving the pulsed and CW output power of single-mode semiconductor lasers.