Microelectromechanical control of the state of quantum cascade laser frequency combs
Name
18601cb2d05d92c46adf84bea8799d57981b.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
4.37 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
41f27d232d85331e0270119f70e5c7c8
Author(s)
Burghoff, David Patrick
Han, Ningren
Hu, Qing
Date Issued
July 2019
Journal
Applied Physics Letters
Publisher
AIP Publishing
Citation
Burghoff, David et al. “Microelectromechanical control of the state of quantum cascade laser frequency combs.” Applied Physics Letters, 115, 2 (July 2019): 021105 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Chip-scale frequency combs such as those based on quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) or microresonators are attracting tremendous attention because of their potential to solve key challenges in sensing and metrology. Though nonlinearity and proper dispersion engineering can create a comb - light whose lines are perfectly evenly spaced - these devices can enter into different states depending on their history, a critical problem that can necessitate slow and manual intervention. Moreover, their large repetition rates are problematic for applications such as dual comb molecular spectroscopy, requiring gapless tuning of the offset. Here, we show that by blending midinfrared QCL combs with microelectromechanical comb drives, one can directly manipulate the dynamics of the comb and identify new physical effects. Not only do the resulting devices remain on a chip-scale and are able to stably tune over large frequency ranges, but they can also switch between different comb states at extremely high speeds. We use these devices to probe hysteresis in comb formation and develop a protocol for achieving a particular comb state regardless of its initial state.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5098086
