Title

High-Power, Low-Noise 1.5-Μm Slab-Coupled Optical Waveguide (Scow) Emitters: Physics, Devices, And Applications

Keywords

External-cavity lasers; mode-locked lasers; noise figure; optical waveguides; power amplifiers; quantum-well devices; semiconductor optical amplifiers; single-frequency lasers

Abstract

We review the development of a new class of high-power, edge-emitting, semiconductor optical gain medium based on the slab-coupled optical waveguide (SCOW) concept. We restrict the scope to InP-based devices incorporating either InGaAsP or InGaAlAs quantum-well active regions and operating in the 1.5-μm -wavelength region. Key properties of the SCOW gain medium include large transverse optical mode dimensions (>5 × 5 μm), ultralow optical confinement factor (Γ ∼ 0.25-1%), and small internal loss coefficient (α i ∼ 0.5cm -1). These properties have enabled the realization of 1) packaged Watt-class semiconductor optical amplifers (SOAs) having low-noise figure (4-5dB), 2) monolithic passively mode-locked lasers generating 0.25-W average output power, 3) external-cavity fiber-ring actively mode-locked lasers exhibiting residual timing jitter of <10 fs (1 Hz to Nyquist), and 4) single-frequency external-cavity lasers producing 0.37-W output power with Gaussian (Lorentzian) linewidth of 35kHz (1.75kHz) and relative intensity noise (RIN) <-160dB/Hz from 200kHz to 10 GHz. We provide an overview the SCOW design principles, describe simulation results that quantify the performance limitations due to confinement factor, linear optical loss mechanisms, and nonlinear two-photon absorption (TPA) loss, and review the SCOW devices that have been demonstrated and applications that these devices are expected to enable. © 2006 IEEE.

Publication Date

12-19-2011

Publication Title

IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics

Volume

17

Issue

6

Number of Pages

1698-1714

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1109/JSTQE.2011.2126041

Socpus ID

83455258008 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/83455258008

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