Impact of Fundamental Temperature Fluctuations on the Frequency Stability of Metallo- Dielectric Nanolasers

Abstract

The capability of nanolasers to generate coherent light in small volume resonators has made them attractive to be implemented in future ultra-compact photonic integrated circuits. However, compared to conventional lasers, nanolasers are also known for their broader spectral linewidths, that are usually on the order of 1 nm. While it is well known that the broad linewidths in light emitters originate from various noise sources, there has been no rigorous study on evaluating the origins of the linewidth broadening for nanolasers to date to the best of our knowledge. In this manuscript, we investigate the impact of fundamental thermal fluctuations on the nanolaser linewidth. We show that such thermal fluctuations are one of the intrinsic noise sources in a sub-wavelength metal-clad nanolaser inducing significant linewidth broadening. We further show that with the reduction of the nanolaser’s dimensions, i.e., mode volume, and the increase of the ambient temperature, such linewidth broadening is enhanced, due to the effect of more pronounced fundamental thermal fluctuation. Specifically, we show that the finite linewidths induced by the thermal fluctuations at room temperature are 1.14nm and 0.16nm, for nanolasers with core radii of 250nm and 750nm, respectively. Although our study was performed on a metallo-dielectric nanolaser, it is reasonable to assume that, in general, other nanolaser architectures are also more prone to thermal fluctuations, and hence exhibit larger finite linewidths than conventional large mode volume lasers.