Chip-scale, CMOS-compatible, high energy passively Q-switched laser
Abstract
Chip-scale, high-energy optical pulse generation is becoming increasingly important as we expand activities into hard to reach areas such as space and deep ocean. Q-switching of the laser cavity is the best known technique for generating high-energy pulses, and typically such systems are in the realm of large bench-top solid-state lasers and fiber lasers, especially in the long wavelength range >1.8 um, thanks to their large energy storage capacity. However, in integrated photonics, the very property of tight mode confinement, that enables a small form factor, becomes an impediment to high energy application due to small optical mode cross-section. In this work, we demonstrate complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible, rare-earth gain based large mode area (LMA) passively Q-switched laser in a compact footprint. We demonstrate high on-chip output pulse energy of >150 nJ in single transverse fundamental mode in the eye-safe window (1.9 um), with a slope efficiency ~ 40% in a footprint of ~9 mm2. The high energy pulse generation demonstrated in this work is comparable or in many cases exceeds Q-switched fiber lasers. This bodes well for field applications in medicine and space.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2303.00849,
title = {Chip-scale, CMOS-compatible, high energy passively Q-switched laser},
author = {Neetesh Singh and Jan Lorenzen and Milan Sinobad and Kai Wang and Andreas C. Liapis and Henry Frankis and Stefanie Haugg and Henry Francis and Jose Carreira and Michael Geiselmann and Mahmoud A. Gaafar and Tobias Herr and Jonathan D. B. Bradley and Zhipei Sun and Sonia M Garcia-Blanco and Franz X. Kartner},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.00849},
year = {2023}
}