Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape
The ray dynamics of optical cavities exhibits bifurcation points: special geometries at which ray trajectories switch abruptly between stable and unstable. A prominent example is the Fabry–Perot cavity with two planar mirrors, which is widely employed for broad-area semiconductor lasers. Such caviti...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/165039 |
| _version_ | 1826120475716091904 |
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| author | Kim, Kyungduk Bittner, Stefan Jin, Yuhao Zeng, Yongquan Guazzotti, Stefano Hess, Ortwin Wang, Qi Jie Cao, Hui |
| author2 | School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering |
| author_facet | School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Kim, Kyungduk Bittner, Stefan Jin, Yuhao Zeng, Yongquan Guazzotti, Stefano Hess, Ortwin Wang, Qi Jie Cao, Hui |
| author_sort | Kim, Kyungduk |
| collection | NTU |
| description | The ray dynamics of optical cavities exhibits bifurcation points: special geometries at which ray trajectories switch abruptly between stable and unstable. A prominent example is the Fabry–Perot cavity with two planar mirrors, which is widely employed for broad-area semiconductor lasers. Such cavities support lasing in a relatively small number of transverse modes, and the laser is highly susceptible to filamentation and irregular pulsations. Here, we demonstrate experimentally that a slight deviation from this bifurcation point (planar cavity) dramatically changes the laser performance. In a near-planar cavity with two concave mirrors, the number of transverse lasing modes increases drastically. While the spatial coherence of the laser emission is reduced, the divergence angle of the output beam remains relatively narrow. Moreover, the spatiotemporal lasing dynamics becomes significantly more stable compared to that in a Fabry–Perot cavity. Our near-planar broad-area semiconductor laser has higher brightness, better directionality, and hence allows shorter integration times than an incandescent lamp while featuring sufficiently low speckle contrast at the same time, making it a vastly superior light source for speckle-free imaging. Furthermore, our method of controlling spatiotemporal dynamics with extreme sensitivity near a bifurcation point may be applied to other types of high-power lasers and nonlinear dynamic systems. |
| first_indexed | 2024-10-01T05:17:24Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | ntu-10356/165039 |
| institution | Nanyang Technological University |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-10-01T05:17:24Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | ntu-10356/1650392023-03-10T15:40:23Z Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape Kim, Kyungduk Bittner, Stefan Jin, Yuhao Zeng, Yongquan Guazzotti, Stefano Hess, Ortwin Wang, Qi Jie Cao, Hui School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Centre for OptoElectronics and Biophotonics (OPTIMUS) The Photonics Institute Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics Semiconductor Lasers Optical Cavity The ray dynamics of optical cavities exhibits bifurcation points: special geometries at which ray trajectories switch abruptly between stable and unstable. A prominent example is the Fabry–Perot cavity with two planar mirrors, which is widely employed for broad-area semiconductor lasers. Such cavities support lasing in a relatively small number of transverse modes, and the laser is highly susceptible to filamentation and irregular pulsations. Here, we demonstrate experimentally that a slight deviation from this bifurcation point (planar cavity) dramatically changes the laser performance. In a near-planar cavity with two concave mirrors, the number of transverse lasing modes increases drastically. While the spatial coherence of the laser emission is reduced, the divergence angle of the output beam remains relatively narrow. Moreover, the spatiotemporal lasing dynamics becomes significantly more stable compared to that in a Fabry–Perot cavity. Our near-planar broad-area semiconductor laser has higher brightness, better directionality, and hence allows shorter integration times than an incandescent lamp while featuring sufficiently low speckle contrast at the same time, making it a vastly superior light source for speckle-free imaging. Furthermore, our method of controlling spatiotemporal dynamics with extreme sensitivity near a bifurcation point may be applied to other types of high-power lasers and nonlinear dynamic systems. Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) National Research Foundation (NRF) Published version The authors acknowledge the computational resources provided by the Yale High Performance Computing Cluster (Yale HPC). H.C. acknowledges support from the Office of Naval Research under Grant No. N00014-221-1-2026. S.B. acknowledges support for the Chair in Photonics from the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur, de la Recherche et de l’Innovation, Région Grand-Est, Département Moselle, European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), Metz Métropole, GDI Simulation, CentraleSupélec, and Fondation CentraleSupélec. Q. J. Wang acknowledges support from Singapore A*STAR funding A18A7b0058, and Singapore National Research Foundation funding NRF-CRP19-2017-01 and NRF-CRP23-2019-0007. O.H. acknowledges support from the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) via Grant No. 18/RP/6236. 2023-03-10T02:55:56Z 2023-03-10T02:55:56Z 2022 Journal Article Kim, K., Bittner, S., Jin, Y., Zeng, Y., Guazzotti, S., Hess, O., Wang, Q. J. & Cao, H. (2022). Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape. APL Photonics, 7, 056106-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0087048 2378-0967 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/165039 10.1063/5.0087048 7 056106 en NRF-CRP19- 2017-01 NRF-CRP23-2019-0007 A18A7b0058 APL Photonics © 2022 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0087048 application/pdf |
| spellingShingle | Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics Semiconductor Lasers Optical Cavity Kim, Kyungduk Bittner, Stefan Jin, Yuhao Zeng, Yongquan Guazzotti, Stefano Hess, Ortwin Wang, Qi Jie Cao, Hui Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| title | Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| title_full | Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| title_fullStr | Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| title_full_unstemmed | Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| title_short | Sensitive control of broad-area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| title_sort | sensitive control of broad area semiconductor lasers by cavity shape |
| topic | Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Optics, optoelectronics, photonics Semiconductor Lasers Optical Cavity |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/165039 |
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