Chip-scale ultrafast mode-locked laser based on nanophotonic lithium niobate.Credit: Alireza Marandi
Researchers have developed a compact mode-locked laser integrated into a nanophotonic platform that can generate ultrafast light pulses at high power. This breakthrough in the miniaturization of MLL technology has the potential to significantly expand photonics applications.
Innovation in mode-locked laser technology
Setting out to improve a technology that typically requires bulky benchtop equipment, Quishi Guo and colleagues have miniaturized a mode-locked laser (MLL) with an integrated nanophotonics platform to the size of an optical chip. This result shows promise for the development of ultrafast nanophotonics systems for a wide range of applications.
Possibility of small MLL
Model-locked lasers (MLLs) can generate coherent ultrashort pulses of light at very fast speeds on the order of picoseconds to femtoseconds. These devices have enabled numerous techniques in the field of photonics, including extreme nonlinear optics.photon Microscopy and optical computing.
However, most MLLs are expensive, power-hungry, and require bulky, separate optical components and equipment. As a result, the use of ultrafast photonic systems has generally been limited to benchtop laboratory experiments. Furthermore, so-called “integrated” MLLs aimed at driving nanophotonics platforms have significant limitations, such as low peak power and lack of controllability.
Breakthrough advances in nanophotonics MLL integration
Through hybrid integration of semiconductor optical amplification chips and novel thin-film lithium niobate nanophotonic circuits, Guo other. We created an optical chip-sized integrated MLL.
According to the authors, this MLL generates ultrashort light pulses of about 4.8 picoseconds at about 1065 nanometers with a maximum output of about 0.5 watts. This is the highest output pulse energy and peak power of any MLL integrated into a nanophotonics platform.
Furthermore, the researchers show that the repetition rate of the integrated MLL can be tuned over a range of about 200 MHz and that the coherence properties of the laser can be precisely controlled, creating a fully stable on-chip nanophotonic frequency comb source. provided a path to.
Learn more about this breakthrough advancement below.
Reference: “Ultrafast mode-locked lasers in nanophotonic lithium niobate” Qiushi Guo, Benjamin K. Gutierrez, Ryotosekine, Robert M. Gray, James A. Williams, Luis Ledezma, Luis Costa, Arkadev Roy, Selina Zhou, Mingchen Liu, and Alireza Marandi, November 9, 2023; science.
DOI: 10.1126/science.adj5438
Source: scitechdaily.com
