Coherent instabilities in a semiconductor laser with fast gain recovery

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Coherent instabilities in a semiconductor laser with fast gain recovery

Christine Y. Wang, L. Diehl, A. Gordon, C. Jirauschek, F. X. Kärtner, A. Belyanin, D. Bour, S. Corzine, G. Höfler, M. Troccoli, J. Faist, and Federico Capasso

Phys. Rev. A 75, 031802(R) – Published 30 March 2007

Abstract

We report the observation of a coherent multimode instability in quantum cascade lasers (QCLs), which is driven by the same fundamental mechanism of Rabi oscillations as the elusive Risken-Nummedal-Graham-Haken (RNGH) instability predicted $40 years$ ago for ring lasers. The threshold of the observed instability is significantly lower than in the original RNGH instability, which we attribute to saturable-absorption nonlinearity in the laser. Coherent effects, which cannot be reproduced by standard laser rate equations, can play therefore a key role in the multimode dynamics of QCLs, and in lasers with fast gain recovery in general.

Received 11 July 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.75.031802

Authors & Affiliations

Christine Y. Wang¹, L. Diehl², A. Gordon³, C. Jirauschek³, F. X. Kärtner^3,*, A. Belyanin⁴, D. Bour⁵, S. Corzine⁵, G. Höfler⁵, M. Troccoli², J. Faist⁶, and Federico Capasso^2,†

¹Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
²School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
³Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
⁴Department of Physics, Texas A & M University, College Station, Texas 77843, USA
⁵Agilent Technologies, Palo Alto, California 94306, USA
⁶Institute of Physics, University of Neuchâtel, CH-2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland

^*Electronic address: kaertner@mit.edu
^†Electronic address: capasso@deas.harvard.edu

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Issue

Vol. 75, Iss. 3 — March 2007

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