Silicon photonics-based high-energy passively Q-switched laser

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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä

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2024-05

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en

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7

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Nature Photonics, Volume 18, issue 5, pp. 485-491

Abstract

Chip-scale, high-energy optical pulse generation is becoming increasingly important as integrated optics expands into space and medical applications where miniaturization is needed. Q-switching of the laser cavity was historically the first technique to generate high-energy pulses, and typically such systems are in the realm of large bench-top solid-state lasers and fibre lasers, especially in the long wavelength range >1.8 µm, thanks to their large energy storage capacity. However, in integrated photonics, the very property of tight mode confinement that enables a small form factor becomes an impediment to high-energy applications owing to small optical mode cross-sections. Here we demonstrate a high-energy silicon photonics-based passively Q-switched laser with a compact footprint using a rare-earth gain-based large-mode-area waveguide. We demonstrate high on-chip output pulse energies of >150 nJ and 250 ns pulse duration in a single transverse fundamental mode in the retina-safe spectral region (1.9 µm), with a slope efficiency of ~40% in a footprint of ~9 mm2. The high-energy pulse generation demonstrated in this work is comparable to or in many cases exceeds that of Q-switched fibre lasers. This bodes well for field applications in medicine and space.

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Funding Information: This work is supported by the EU Horizon 2020 framework programme (grant agreement number 965124 (FEMTOCHIP)), Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SP2111) through contract number 403188360 and the Helmholtz Young Investigators Group VH-NG-1404. We acknowledge the provision of facilities and technical support from the Otaniemi research infrastructure (OtaNano-Micronova Nanofabrication Centre). We acknowledge J. Miller for the ellipsometry measurements. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2024. | openaire: EC/H2020/965124/EU//FEMTOCHIP

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Singh, N, Lorenzen, J, Sinobad, M, Wang, K, Liapis, A C, Frankis, H C, Haugg, S, Francis, H, Carreira, J, Geiselmann, M, Gaafar, M A, Herr, T, Bradley, J D B, Sun, Z, Garcia-Blanco, S M & Kärtner, F X 2024, ' Silicon photonics-based high-energy passively Q-switched laser ', Nature Photonics, vol. 18, no. 5, pp. 485-491 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01388-0