Picosecond pulse amplification up to a peak power of 42  W by a quantum-dot tapered optical amplifier and a mode-locked laser emitting at 126 µm

Abstract

We experimentally study the generation and amplification of stable picosecond-short optical pulses by a master oscillator power-amplifier configuration consisting of a monolithic quantum-dot-based gain-guided tapered laser and amplifier emitting at 1.26 µm without pulse compression, external cavity, gain- or Q-switched operation. We report a peak power of 42 W and a figure-of-merit for second-order nonlinear imaging of 38.5 W2 at a repetition rate of 16 GHz and an associated pulse width of 1.37 ps.

Passively mode-locked semiconductor quantum dot on silicon laser with 400 Hz RF line width

“…Additionally, in the results presented here, a 2.75 times narrower repetition rate line width is observed as compared to the reported repetition rate line width of 1.1 kHz from a complex tapered waveguide design from a silicon quantum-well laser [34] and 4.5 times narrower line width compared to the 1.8 kHz width reported for a monolithic InAs quantum dot passively mode-locked two-section laser on silicon [1]. Comparing the achieved timing stability with quantum dot passively mode-locked lasers on native substrates, except of silicon, repetition rate line widths ranging from 500 Hz up to 27 kHz [37,[39][40][41][42][43] have been reported. A 1.25 to 67.5 times narrower line width is presented here.…”

“…4(b). This corresponds to a pulse peak power of 28.2 mW taking into account a pulse-shape-factor of 0.94 for Gaussian pulses [42] at an average optical output power of 0.48 mW solely by the passively mode-locked laser. This pulse width for a quantum dot laser on silicon is narrow, however 4.8 times larger than that for a tapered design on GaAs [37].…”

“…Shortest generated optical pulses from monolithic passively mode-locked quantum dot lasers grown on native substrates, except of silicon, are 360 fs [37] with a tapered waveguide design and 393 fs [38] for a two-section straight waveguide laser and 493 fs for a tapered three-section waveguide design [39]. [43] and 500 Hz, with an amplitude jitter below 2 % for a packaged quantum dot mode-locked laser [44], have been reported [37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. Table 1 briefly summarizes reported performance of monolithic multi-section passively mode-locked quantum dot lasers highlighting shortest optical pulses and narrowest repetition rate line widths.…”

Ultra-Short Pulse Generation in a Three Section Tapered Passively Mode-Locked Quantum-Dot Semiconductor Laser

“…Employing semiconductor quantum dots as an active medium comes with advantages such as high differential gain, ultra-fast recovery, broad gain spectra, small chirp and low temperature sensitivity, due to their atom-like discrete energy levels 37–41 . These properties can be employed to generate stable mode-locked pulse trains with sub-ps pulses at high repetition rates 3,34,36,42 . By positioning the absorber section at different cavity positions, the pulse peak power and the mode-locking performance can be improved 43,44 .…”

Femtosecond pulse generation beyond photon lifetime limit in gain-switched semiconductor lasers

“…Mode-locked semiconductor lasers in monolithic and externalcavity architectures have been developed since 1980s and demonstrated stable femtosecond pulse generation with high repetition rates corresponding to the cavity length. So far, various types of mode-locked semiconductor lasers have been studied, such as monolithic passive-colliding-pulse-mode-locked quantum-well lasers 1,2 , quantum-dots lasers [3][4][5][6][7] and externalcavity active-mode-locked buried-heterostructure lasers 8,9 . Recently, intra-cavity spectral shaping and dispersion control technologies enabled ultrashort pulses within a few hundred femtoseconds [10][11][12] .…”