Supercontinuum generation in quantum wells facilitated by electromagnetically induced transparency

Abstract

In this paper, employing numerical simulation, we examine the possibility of generation of optical supercontinuum (SC) in a multiple quantum well (MQW) system facilitated by electromagnetically induced transparency. Within the transparency window created by a control laser beam in a MQW, another probe pulse experiences negligible loss and large optical non-linearity that has been exploited to obtain the optical SC. With 1.0 pico-second ‘sech’ probe pulses of 500 W peak power at wavelength 739.7 nm, the numerically simulated SC spectrum at the end of the 9.377 μm long MQW extends from 550 to 1000 nm. The spectrum is asymmetric, contains large number of oscillations which is attributed to the nonlinearity induced self-phase modulation and modulation instability. This investigation may lead to the fabrication of on-chip SC sources that can be easily integrated with other semiconductor devices.