Abstract
We investigate the performance of a modern hollow-core optical fibre coupled to a GaAs-based quantum cascade laser (QCL) emitting at a wavelength of 10.7 μm. The QCL is operated in pulsed operation with current pulses of 100 ns width at a repetition rate of 10 kHz at a heat sink temperature of 258 K. The emitted light is collected by a f/1.6 ellipsoidal mirror and focused onto the hollow-core optical fibre. The investigated fibre is 2 m long and is designed for a transmission wavelength of 10.6 μm. After the transmission through fibre, the light is collected by a ZnSe-aspheric lens. We investigate the transmission efficiency of the hollow-core optical fibre and its influence on the intensity noise properties by measuring the transmitted optical peak power in relation to the emitted optical peak power. We find a total transmission loss of 6.25 dB. We then analyze the influence of this hollow-core optical fibre on the intensity noise properties of the QCL in terms of the relative intensity noise (RIN). We find that for the same detected optical peak powers the RIN of the optical power transmitted through the fibre is about 4 dB/Hz lower than the RIN of the emitted optical power. We attribute this reduction of the RIN level to a random selection process of photons due to the losses of the fibre which alters the intensity noise towards the standard quantum limit.
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