Conventional Quantum-well Lasers Research Articles

Turnkey locking of quantum-dot lasers directly grown on Si

Ultralow-noise laser sources are crucial for a variety of applications, including microwave synthesizers, optical gyroscopes and the manipulation of quantum systems. Silicon photonics has emerged as a promising solution for high-coherence applications due to its ability to reduce the system size, weight, power consumption and cost. Semiconductor lasers based on self-injection locking have achieved fibre laser coherence, but typically require a high-quality-factor external cavity to suppress coherence collapse through frequency-selective feedback. Lasers based on external-cavity locking are a low-cost and turnkey operation option, but their coherence is generally inferior to self-injection locking lasers. In this work, we demonstrate quantum-dot lasers grown directly on Si that achieve self-injection-locking laser coherence under turnkey external-cavity locking. The high-performance quantum-dot laser offers a scalable and low-cost heteroepitaxial integration platform. Moreover, the chaos-free nature of the quantum-dot laser enables a 16 Hz Lorentzian linewidth under external-cavity locking using a low-quality-factor external cavity, and improves the frequency noise by an additional order of magnitude compared with conventional quantum-well lasers.

Lasers with asymmetric barrier layers: A promising type of injection lasers

We present an overview of our theoretical and experimental work on a novel type of semiconductor lasers - quantum well (QW) lasers with asymmetric barrier layers (ABLs). Our experimental work supports our theoretical derivations — ABL QW lasers demonstrate superior operating characteristics as compared to conventional QW lasers. In particular, the threshold current is lower and more temperature-stable, the light-current characteristic is more linear, and the wall-plug efficiency is higher in ABL lasers.

Bandedge-engineered quantum well laser

A promising type of quantum well (QW) lasers is discussed—bandedge-engineered (BE) QW lasers. The use of two asymmetric barrier layers (one on each side of the QW) in such lasers prevents establishing a bipolar population in the optical confinement layer (OCL) and thus suppresses the parasitic electron–hole recombination there. We discuss semiconductor alloys suitable for pseudomorphic growth of BE QW lasers on GaAs substrates and propose material compositions for such lasers. We use an analytical model to calculate the device characteristics. Due to suppression of the recombination in the OCL, the threshold current density of a BE QW laser is considerably reduced and the characteristic temperature T0 is increased compared to conventional QW lasers. Ideally, T0 of a BE QW laser can be as high as 300 K at room temperature. In more realistic BE QW lasers incorporating thin indent layers (located between the QW and each of the asymmetric barrier layers), the threshold current density is still low, and T0 is above 200 K for practical cavity lengths. Our results suggest that BE QW lasers offer major advantages over conventional QW lasers for low-threshold and high-temperature-stable operation.

Gain coefficient, quantum efficiency, transparency current density, and internal loss of the AlGaAs-GaAs-based lasers on Si substrate

The AlGaAs-GaAs based lasers on Si substrate with GaAs quantum-well and island-like active regions are fabricated by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The parameters of internal quantum efficiency, gain coefficient, transparency current density, and the internal loss that describe the operating characteristics of laser diodes are investigated. The optical confinement factor is calculated with the assumption that the light emission occurs from the island regions only. In addition, longer minority carrier lifetime obtained for the lasers with island-like active regions reveals their improved characteristics over conventional quantum-well lasers.

Tunneling injection lasers: a new class of lasers with reduced hot carrier effects

In conventional quantum-well lasers, carriers are injected into the quantum wells with quite high energies. We have investigated quantum-well lasers in which electrons are injected into the quantum-well ground state through tunneling. The tunneling injection lasers are shown to have negligible gain compression, superior high-temperature performance, lower Auger recombination and wavelength chirp, and better modulation characteristics when compared to conventional lasers. The underlying physical principles behind the superior performance are also explored, and calculations and measurements of relaxation times in quantum wells have been made. Experimental results are presented for lasers made with a variety of material systems, InGaAs-GaAs-AlGaAs, InGaAs-GaAs-InGaAsP-InGaP, and InGaAs-InGaAsP-InP, for different applications. Both single quantum-well and multiple quantum-well tunneling injection lasers are demonstrated.