No Arabic abstract
High-power lasers have numerous scientific and industrial applications. Some key areas include laser cutting and welding in manufacturing, directed energy in fusion reactors or defense applications, laser surgery in medicine, and advanced photolithography in the semiconductor industry. These applications require optical components, in particular mirrors, that withstand high optical powers for directing light from the laser to the target. Ordinarily, mirrors are comprised of multilayer coatings of different refractive index and thickness. At high powers, imperfections in these layers lead to absorption of light, resulting in thermal stress and permanent damage to the mirror. Here we design, simulate, fabricate, and demonstrate monolithic and highly reflective dielectric mirrors which operate under high laser powers without damage. The mirrors are realized by etching nanostructures into the surface of single-crystal diamond, a material with exceptional optical and thermal properties. We measure reflectivities of greater than 98% and demonstrate damage-free operation using 10 kW of continuous-wave laser light at 1070 nm, with intensities up to 4.6 MW/cm2. In contrast, at these laser powers, we observe damage to a standard dielectric mirror based on optical coatings. Our results initiate a new category of broadband optics that operate in extreme conditions.
Silicon nitride (SiN) waveguides with ultra-low optical loss enable integrated photonic applications including low noise, narrow linewidth lasers, chip-scale nonlinear photonics, and microwave photonics. Lasers are key components to SiN photonic integrated circuits (PICs), but are difficult to fully integrate with low-index SiN waveguides due to their large mismatch with the high-index III-V gain materials. The recent demonstration of multilayer heterogeneous integration provides a practical solution and enabled the first-generation of lasers fully integrated with SiN waveguides. However a laser with high device yield and high output power at telecommunication wavelengths, where photonics applications are clustered, is still missing, hindered by large mode transition loss, nonoptimized cavity design, and a complicated fabrication process. Here, we report high-performance lasers on SiN with tens of milliwatts output through the SiN waveguide and sub-kHz fundamental linewidth, addressing all of the aforementioned issues. We also show Hertz-level linewidth lasers are achievable with the developed integration techniques. These lasers, together with high-$Q$ SiN resonators, mark a milestone towards a fully-integrated low-noise silicon nitride photonics platform. This laser should find potential applications in LIDAR, microwave photonics and coherent optical communications.
The coherent interaction between optical and acoustic waves via stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is a fundamental tool for manipulating light at GHz frequencies. Its narrowband and noise-suppressing characteristics have recently enabled microwave-photonic functionality in integrated devices based on chalcogenide glasses, silica and silicon. Diamond possesses much higher acoustic and bandgap frequencies and superior thermal properties, promising increased frequency, bandwidth and power; however, fabrication of low-loss optical and acoustic guidance structures with the resonances matched to the Brillouin shift is currently challenging. Here we use intense cavity-enhanced Raman generation to drive a diamond Brillouin laser without acoustic guidance. Our versatile configuration - the first demonstration of a free-space Brillouin laser - provides tens-of-watts of continuous Brillouin laser output on a 71 GHz Stokes shift with user switching between single Stokes and Brillouin frequency comb output. These results open the door to high-power, high-coherence lasers and Brillouin frequency combs, and are a major step towards on-chip diamond SBS devices.
Soliton microcombs offer the prospect of advanced optical metrology and timing systems in compact form factors. In these applications, pumping of microcombs directly from a semiconductor laser without amplification or triggering components is desirable for reduced power operation and to simplify system design. At the same time, low repetition rate microcombs are required in many comb applications for interface to detectors and electronics, but their increased mode volume makes them challenging to pump at low power. Here, 10 GHz repetition rate soliton microcombs are directly pumped by low-power (< 20 mW) diode lasers. High-Q silica microresonators are used for this low power operation and are packaged into fiber-connectorized modules that feature temperature control for improved long-term frequency stability.
The vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) have emerged as a vital approach for realizing energy efficient, high speed optical interconnects in the data center and supercomputers. As of today, VCSEL is the most suitable for mass production in terms of cost-effectiveness and reliability. However, there are still key challenges for higher speed modulation above 40 GHz. Here, a hexagonal transverse coupled cavity VCSEL adiabatically coupled through the center cavity is proposed. A 3-dB roll-off modulation bandwidth of 45 GHz is demonstrated, which is five times greater than a conventional VCSEL fabricated on the same epi-wafer structure. While a parity time (PT) symmetry approaches add loss to engineer the topological state of the laser system, here, a radical paradigm shift with gain introduces symmetry breaking. This idea, then enables a single mode operation with a side-mode suppression-ratio (SMSR) of > 30 decibels and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of > 45 decibels. The energy distribution inside the coupled cavity system is also redistributed to provide a coherent gain in a spatially separated system. Consequently, throughput power is three times higher than that of the conventional VCSEL.
Due to the inherent in-direct bandgap nature of Silicon, heterogeneous integration of semiconductor lasers on Silicon on Insulator (SOI) is crucial for next-generation on-chip optical interconnects. Compact, high-efficient and high-tolerant couplers between III-V light source and silicon chips have been the challenge for photonic integrated circuit (PIC). Here, we redesign the taper adiabatic coupler with the total coupling length of only 4 {mu}m, and propose another two novel slot coupler and bridge-SWG coupler with both coupling length of 7 {mu}m, to heterogeneously integrate III-V lasers and silicon chips. We study theoretically the optical mode coupling process through the redesigned taper coupler, the final coupling results match well with the simulation in 3D-FDTD. The three compact couplers represent fundamental TE mode coupling efficiencies all over 90%, even 95.7% for bridge-SWG coupler, to the best of our knowledge, are also the shortest coupling structures (7 um). Moreover, these coupling structures also possess excellent fabrication tolerance.