5.5 W near-diffraction-limited power from resonant leaky-wave coupled phase-locked arrays of quantum cascade lasers

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Abstract

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.

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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

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