No Arabic abstract
A metasurface hologram combines fine spatial resolution and large viewing angles with a planar form factor and compact size. However, it suffers coherent artifacts originating from electromagnetic cross-talk between closely packed meta-atoms and fabrication defects of nanoscale features. Here, we introduce an efficient method to remove all artifacts by fine-tuning the spatial coherence of illumination. Our method is implemented with a degenerate cavity laser, which allows precise, continuous tuning of spatial coherence over a wide range with little variation in emission spectrum and total power. We find the optimal degree of spatial coherence to remove the coherent artifacts of a meta-hologram while maintaining the image sharpness. This work paves the way to compact and dynamical holographic display free of coherent defects.
We demonstrate a technique to tune the optical properties of micropillar cavities by creating small defects on the sample surface near the cavity region with an intense focused laser beam. Such defects modify strain in the structure, changing the birefringence in a controllable way. We apply the technique to make the fundamental cavity mode polarization-degenerate and to fine tune the overall mode frequencies, as needed for applications in quantum information science.
A many-mode laser with nonlinear modal interaction could serve as a model system to study many-body physics. However, precise and continuous tuning of the interaction strength over a wide range is challenging. Here, we present a unique method for controlling lasing mode structures by introducing random phase fluctuation to a nearly degenerate cavity. We show numerically and experimentally that as the characteristic scale of phase fluctuation decreases by two orders of magnitude, the transverse modes become fragmented and the reduction of their spatial overlap suppresses modal competition for gain, allowing more modes to lase. The tunability, flexibility and robustness of our system provides a powerful platform for investigating many-body phenomena.
We presented a detailed experimental study on lasing in GaAs microstadium with various shapes. Unlike most deformed microcavities, the lasing threshold varies non-monotonically with the major-to-minor-axis ratio of the stadium. Under spatially uniform optical pumping, the first lasing mode corresponds to a high-quality scar mode consisting of several unstable periodic orbits. By tuning the shape of GaAs stadium, we are able to minimize the lasing threshold. This work demonstrates the possibility of controlling chaotic microcavity laser.
We propose and demonstrate a method for measuring the time evolution of the off-diagonal elements $rho_{n,n+k}(t)$ of the reduced density matrix obtained from the quantum theory of the laser. The decay rates of the off-diagonal matrix element $rho_{n,n+k}(t)$ (k=2,3) are measured for the first time and compared with that of $rho_{n,n+1}(t)$, which corresponds to the linewidth of the laser. The experimental results agree with the quantum theory of the laser.
We experimentally study the coherence time of a below-threshold Raman laser in which the gain medium is a gas of magneto-optically trapped atoms. The second-order optical coherence exhibits photon bunching with a correlation time which is varied by two orders of magnitude by controlling the gain. Results are in good agreement with a simple analytic model which suggests the effect is dominated by gain, rather than dispersion, in this system. Cavity ring-down measurements show the photon lifetime, related to the first-order coherence time, is also increased.