26th Australian Institute of Physics Congress and the Australian and New Zealand Conference on Optics and Photonics

Integrated, on-chip, semiconductor lasers at sub-micron wavelengths

Not scheduled

20m

Belinda Hutchinson Building (The University of Sydney )

Invited talk ANZOS | Photonics and Optics (ANZCOP)

Description

Development of stand-alone photonic integrated circuits (PICs) has been limited by lack of integration of active components such as lasers and amplifiers. Heterogeneous integration of group III-V quantum well (QW) or quantum dot active layers with passive PICs paves the way toward the generation, amplification, manipulation, and detection of coherent signals on a photonic chip. The demand from datacom and telecom industries has resulted in a rapid development of heterogeneous lasers at wavelengths around 1310 nm and 1550 nm. Such efforts, however, are lagging at sub-micrometer wavelengths, including visible and ultraviolet, that are of great importance for emerging quantum systems based on optically controlled neutral atoms and trapped ions. These systems are a critical component of several emerging technologies. These include quantum information processing with neutral atom or trapped-ion qubits, optical atomic clocks, cold-atom interferometers for Global Positioning System (GPS)-free navigation, magnetometers, and gravimeters.
The inability to use silicon photonics at these shorter wavelengths due to bandgap absorption complicates integration and necessitates development of platforms involving large bandgap, low refractive index, photonic materials such as silicon nitride, lithium niobate, and tantalum pentoxide (tantala).
In this presentation, we present development of heterogeneous PICs involving GaAs-based semiconductor heterostructure directly bonded to patterned tantala PICs. The GaAs heterostructure utilizes In(Al)GaAs QWs to provide optical gain at wavelengths ranging 700 nm to 1000 nm, while passive components such as routing waveguides, couplers, beamsplitters, and laser cavity feedback structures, are formed in the tantala waveguiding layer. Such a platform simultaneously supports a diverse set of on-chip functionalities such as high-Q micro-ring resonators with intrinsic quality factors exceeding two million, semiconductor optical amplifiers, Fabry-Perot lasers with 40 mA threshold current and > 2.5 mW output power, and single-mode distributed feedback (DFB) lasers with > 40 dB side mode suppression ratio and > 2 mW output power.