Five, 8.36 μm-emitting quantum-cascade lasers (QCLs) have been monolithically phase-locked in the in-phase array mode via resonant leaky-wave coupling. The structure is fabricated by etch and regrowth which provides large index steps (Δn = 0.10) between antiguided-array elements and interelement regions. Such high index contrast photonic-crystal (PC) lasers have more than an order of magnitude higher index contrast than PC-distributed feedback lasers previously used for coherent beam combining in QCLs. Absorption loss to metal layers inserted in the interelement regions provides a wide (∼1.0 μm) range in interelement width over which the resonant in-phase mode is strongly favored to lase. Room-temperature, in-phase-mode operation with ∼2.2 kA/cm2 threshold-current density is obtained from 105 μm-wide aperture devices. The far-field beam pattern has lobewidths 1.65× diffraction limit (D.L.) and 82% of the light in the main lobe, up to 1.8× threshold. Peak pulsed near-D.L. power of 5.5 W is obtained, with 4.5 W emitted in the main lobe. Means of how to increase the device internal efficiency are discussed.
CITATION STYLE
Kirch, J. D., Chang, C. C., Boyle, C., Mawst, L. J., Lindberg, D., Earles, T., & Botez, D. (2015). 5.5 W near-diffraction-limited power from resonant leaky-wave coupled phase-locked arrays of quantum cascade lasers. Applied Physics Letters, 106(6). https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4908178
Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.