Abstract
Lasers distinguish themselves for the high coherence and high brightness of their radiation, features which have been exploited both in fundamental research and a broad range of technologies. However, emerging applications in the field of imaging, which can benefit from brightness, directionality and efficiency, are impaired by the speckle noise superimposed onto the picture by the interference of coherent scattered fields. We contribute a novel approach to the longstanding efforts in speckle noise reduction by exploiting a new emission regime typical of nanolasers, where low-coherence laser pulses are spontaneously emitted below the laser threshold. Exploring the dynamic properties of this kind of emission in the presence of optical reinjection we show, through the numerical analysis of a fully stochastic approach, that it is possible to tailor some of the properties of the emitted radiation, in addition to exploiting this naturally existing regime. This investigation, therefore, proposes semiconductor nanolasers as potential attractive, miniaturized and versatile future sources of low-coherence radiation for imaging.
Highlights
Since the first demonstration by Maiman in 1960, lasers have become indispensable light sources that enable a wide range of consumer technologies and data communication systems while promoting fundamental research in different fields [1]
The interest resides in characterizing the potential usefulness of this intrinsic emission region, normally considered a shortcoming of ultra-small devices, to exploit its features at virtually no cost! Through simulations based on stochastic modeling of the photon emission, we numerically investigate the dynamic properties of their light in the lasing transition region
We examine the possibility of exploiting the low coherence of the photon bursts that appear, with superthermal statistics (g(2) (0) > 2): proof of a dynamics consisting of independent photon spikes
Summary
Since the first demonstration by Maiman in 1960, lasers have become indispensable light sources that enable a wide range of consumer technologies and data communication systems while promoting fundamental research in different fields [1]. Notice that an edge-emitter has a sufficiently large cavity volume (to simplify the image) to be considered a macroscopic laser, in spite of its reduced physical size [34,35,36] This interesting parallel highlights the intrinsic differences between the two kinds of sources and the potential that nanodevices hold over macroscopic ones, as long as the photon flux delivers sufficient illumination. Following this promising experimental demonstration, we focus here on a simpler system: a single nanolaser operated in the low-coherence emission regime, which naturally precedes the laser threshold. The aim is to study application-oriented, low-coherence light from sources possessing a very high efficiency, an extremely low thermal load and are so small as to be integrated on-chip or packaged close to fiber tips
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