Coherent instabilities in a semiconductor laser with fast gain recovery

By C. Wang, L. Diehl, Ariel Gordon, Christian Jirauschek, F. Kaertner, A. Belyanin, D. Bour, S. Corzine, G. Hoefler, M. Troccoli and 2 more. 2006

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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.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Spectroscopy

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6440c6078294943d4649761e38f5d57602c23996