Electrically widely tunable interband cascade lasers

Electrically tunable interband cascade lasers are demonstrated with a wide tuning range of about 280 cm−1 (34 meV in energy or 630 nm in wavelength) near 4.5 μm and about 180 cm−1 (22 meV or 900 nm) near 7 μm wavelengths. The laser structures are designed such that the heating and Stark effects act together to enhance the red-shift of the lasing wavelength with current injection to achieve wide tunability. The control and manipulation of the tuning range and rate are discussed.

[1]  M. Razeghi,et al.  Short wavelength (/spl lambda//spl sim/4.3 /spl mu/m) high-performance continuous-wave quantum-cascade lasers , 2005, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[2]  B. Mizaikoff,et al.  Breath analysis with broadly tunable quantum cascade lasers. , 2013, Analytical chemistry.

[3]  Carlo Sirtori,et al.  Laser action by tuning the oscillator strength , 1997, Nature.

[4]  Mattias Beck,et al.  Electrically tunable, high performance quantum cascade laser , 2010 .

[5]  C. Gmachl,et al.  Voltage Tunability of Quantum Cascade Lasers , 2009, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

[6]  Z. Hatzopoulos,et al.  Tunable laser diodes by Stark effect , 2003 .

[7]  William W. Bewley,et al.  High-temperature interband cascade lasers emitting at λ=3.6–4.3μm , 2007 .

[8]  M. Buchanan,et al.  Interband cascade light emitting diodes in the 5–8 μm spectrum region , 1997 .

[9]  Claire F. Gmachl,et al.  A widely voltage-tunable quantum cascade laser based on “two-step” coupling , 2009 .

[10]  Rui Q. Yang.  Infrared laser based on intersubband transitions in quantum wells , 1995 .

[11]  Electric field dependence of the eigenstates of coupled quantum wells , 1990 .

[12]  Jerry R. Meyer,et al.  Type‐II quantum‐well lasers for the mid‐wavelength infrared , 1995 .

[13]  Carlo Sirtori,et al.  Distributed feedback quantum cascade lasers , 1997 .

[14]  Chul Soo Kim,et al.  Interband Cascade Lasers With Low Threshold Powers and High Output Powers , 2013, IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics.

[15]  Mattias Beck,et al.  Electrically tunable, room-temperature quantum-cascade lasers , 1999 .

[16]  Rui Q. Yang,et al.  Analysis of transmission in polytype interband tunneling heterostructures , 1992 .

[17]  Zhaobing Tian,et al.  Plasmon-Waveguide Interband Cascade Lasers Near 7.5 $\mu$ m , 2009, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[18]  Sven Höfling,et al.  Interband cascade lasers with room temperature threshold current densities below 100 A/cm2 , 2013 .

[19]  K. L. Wang,et al.  Large Stark effects for transitions from local states to global states in quantum well structures , 1989 .

[20]  Carlo Sirtori,et al.  Mid‐infrared field‐tunable intersubband electroluminescence at room temperature by photon‐assisted tunneling in coupled‐quantum wells , 1994 .

[21]  Temperature dependence of 4.1 μm mid-infrared type II “W” interband cascade lasers , 2011 .

[22]  Federico Capasso,et al.  Ultra-broadband semiconductor laser , 2002, Nature.

[23]  T. Mishima,et al.  InAs-Based Mid-Infrared Interband Cascade Lasers Near 5.3 $\mu{\rm m}$ , 2012, IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics.

[24]  Marcella Giovannini,et al.  Room-temperature continuous-wave operation of an external-cavity quantum cascade laser. , 2007, Optics letters.

[25]  Serge Luryi,et al.  Widely tunable type-II interband cascade laser , 2006 .