Quantum-dot microlaser operating on the whispering gallery mode—A source of squeezed (sub-Poissonian) light

The reduced density matrix method is used to calculate the quantum-statistical properties of the radiation of a quantum-dot laser operating on the whispering gallery mode of a dielectric microsphere. It is shown that under the conditions of strong coupling between the quantum dot and an electromagnetic field the radiation of such a laser can be in a nonclassical (sub-Poissonian) state. The laser scheme considered is characterized by an extremely low lasing threshold and a small number of saturation photons, as result of which lasing is possible with close to zero population inversion of the working levels, if g ? P ? γ ? Γ, where g is the field-matter interaction constant, P is the pumping rate, γ is the loss rate of the resonator, and Γ is the spontaneous emission rate. The largest squeezing inside the resonator-microsphere (the Fano factor F = 0.75) obtains for g ? P ? γ ? Γ, and the greatest squeezing in the fluctuation spectrum outside the resonator [V(ω = 0) ≈ 0.25] occurs for g ～ P ～ γ ? Γ, and in this case a substantial deviation of the photon number statistics of the radiation leaving the resonator from the Poissonian statistics is observed.     

Time-resolved photoluminescence on the stimulated emission in polycrystalline ZnO nanoparticles

The detailed room temperature stimulated emission including its optical characteristics from ZnO nanoparticles, which were prepared by a homogenous precipitation method, has been investigated by the time-resolved spectroscopy. The light emission originates from a free exciton recombination at a lower excitation level; the amplified spontaneous emission appears at a moderate excitation level, in which the threshold excitation intensity is 0.65 GW cm⁻². The resonant stimulated emission was observed in ZnO nanoparticles at a higher excitation intensity. Also, the emission lifetime is drastically reduced. Compared to the fluorescence decay curves, the time-resolved spectrum of the stimulated emission suggests the Gaussian-like decay time with only a few of picoseconds. The dynamic processes of lasing behavior and the characteristics of lasing emission in ZnO nanoparticles could provide the information on the crystal quality, the exciton and the lasing action in the particles.     

Quantum theory of dipole nanolasers

We generalize the semiclassical model of the dipole nanolaser (DNL) based on the Heisenberg?CLangevin approach, taking into account spontaneous emission of plasmons into the generation mode, nonlinearity of generation, and noises. We find a ??thresholdless?? smooth transition from the spontaneous emission to the stimulated emission and the threshold conditions for such a transition and determine the spectrum of generation and its linewidth. We show that, in spite of the very low quality of the DNL generation mode, the linewidth of a DNL with many M ?? 10⁴ ? 10⁵ emitters decreases, with the pump increase, to quite small values ~ 10^?2 of the width 2??₂ of the lasing transition at modest pump rates, about 30 times larger that the decay rate of the emitter upper lasing state. This fact confirms the practical possibilities of realizing DNLs with narrow-line stimulated emission. Otherwise, the linewidth of DNLs with small M ?? 1 number of emitters is larger than 2??₂ and increases with the pump rate. In addition our results on DNLs can be applied to other lasers, such as nanolasers, microlasers, and LEDs for lighting, also with a low-quality cavity and strong spontaneous emission into the generation mode.     

Low-threshold lasing at the edge of a photonic stop band in cholesteric liquid crystals

Low-threshold lasing is observed at the edge of the stop band of a one-dimensional structure-a dye-doped cholesteric liquid-crystal film. The mode closest to the edge has the lowest lasing threshold. The rates of spontaneous and stimulated emission are suppressed within the stop band and enhanced at the band edge. The ratio of right to left circularly polarized spontaneous emission is in good agreement with calculated density of photon states.     

Spin-dependent photoemission induced by a jump in the electron g-factor at the p-GaAs(Cs,O)-vacuum interface

It has been found experimentally that the probability of emitting electrons from p-GaAs(Cs,O) to vacuum in the presence of a magnetic field depends on the sign of the circular polarization of exciting light. The main cause of this effect is the jump in the electron g-factor at the semiconductor-vacuum interface (from g* = ?0.44 in GaAs to g ₀ = 2 in vacuum). Owing to the jump in the electron g-factor, the effective electron affinity depends on the mutual orientation of optically oriented electrons and the magnetic field and this dependence results in the spin-dependent photoemission.     

Edge spontaneous emission from 850 nm vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers

The edge emission from 850 nm vertical-cavity surface emitting lasers has a much larger linewidth and a larger redshift coefficient than the surface emission. These differences explain why the threshold current increased asymmetrically when temperature deviated from the temperature associated with the lowest threshold current. The gradient of the edge intensity–current (L–I) curve declined when current exceeded the threshold value. This decline indicates the competition between stimulated emission and other mechanisms for recombining carriers. Thus, the optimal lasing power can be derived from the edge L–I curve, and the deviation from the measured value is the sum of unwanted optical loss.     

Onset of Lasing in Small Devices: The Identification of the First Threshold through Autocorrelation Resonance

A simple technique for identifying the onset of coherent emission in mesoscale lasers, which makes use of a small‐amplitude modulation added to the pump, is introduced. The optimal modulation frequency is obtained from the radio‐frequency power spectrum of the unperturbed laser emission. The identification of the lasing onset rests on the appearance of a resonance in the experimentally measured zero‐order autocorrelation function (g⁽²⁾(0)) plotted as a function of the pump rate. Numerical proof is provided in support of the autocorrelation resonance. The intrinsic simplicity of this technique and its inherent compatibility with photon counting makes it an excellent tool for certifying the onset of laser emission independent of the laser cavity volume. Recently published measurements of g⁽²⁾(0), obtained in nanolasers, support the extension of this technique to nanoscale devices.     

Scattering and amplification of light in a layer of a nematic liquid crystal

The role of light scattering in liquid crystal lasers can be of two kinds. It can induce undesirable losses increasing the lasing threshold or it can promote the appearance of feedback necessary for lasing. The light amplification spectra of the liquid crystal in the isotropic and light-scattering nematic phases have been measured. For comparison, at a close pump power, the amplification spectra have been measured on a TiO₂ nanoparticle suspension in an isotropic solvent, where the mean free path of photons is the same as that in the liquid crystal. The amplifications in two systems are significantly different, because the shapes of their scattering patterns are strongly different.     

Collective spontaneous emission of dye molecules and lasing

The threshold pump power density for lasing in dye solutions is found to depend on the photon energy of pumping radiation. An increase in the pumping photon energy can significantly lower the threshold pump power of dye lasers. For an ethanol solution of rhodamine 6G with a concentration of 4×10¹⁸ cm^?3, the threshold power density for pumping radiation with a wavelength of 532 nm is 20-fold higher than for pumping radiation with a wavelength of 347 nm. This phenomenon is associated with the competition of collective spontaneous emission, which can lead to the efficient deactivation of excited molecules in femtosecond times, and the dephasing of excited molecules due to the intramolecular nonradiative processes of absorbed-energy conversion. An increase in the dephasing rate with the increasing energy of exciting photons lowers the efficiency of collective spontaneous emission and increases the concentration of dephased excited molecules responsible for lasing.     

Controlling spontaneous emission and threshold-less laser oscillation with optical microcavities

We describe the alteration of spontaneous emission of materials in optical microcavities having dimensions on the order of the emitted wavelength. Particular attention is paid to one-dimensional optical confinement structures with pairs of planar reflectors (planar microcavities). The presence of the cavity causes great modifications in the emission spectrum and spatial emission intensity distribution accompanied by changes in the spontaneous emission lifetime. Experimental results are shown for planar microcavities containing GaAs quantum wells or organic dye-embedded Langmuir-Brodgett films as light emitting layers. Also discussed are the laser oscillation properties of microcavities. A remarkable increase in the spontaneous emission coupling into the laser oscillation mode is expected in microcavity lasers. A rate equation analysis shows that increasing the coupling of spontaneous emission into the cavity mode causes the disappearance of the lasing threshold in the input-output curve. Experimentally verification is presented using planar optical microcavities confining an organic dye solution. The coupling ratio of spontaneous emission into a laser mode increases to be as large as 0.2 for a cavity having a half wavelength distance between a pair of mirrors. At this point, the threshold becomes quite fuzzy. Differences between the spontaneous emission dominant regime and the stimulated emission dominant regime are examined with emission spectra and emission lifetime analyses.     

Effect of coupling of spontaneous emission to the lasing mode in a two level model of quantum cascade lasers

In this paper, an improved two level model of quantum cascade lasers is extended to include the coupling of the spontaneous emission to the lasing mode. The variation of the electron numbers at the two levels, their difference and the variation of the light output with injected current are examined. The normalized modulation response for different ratios of the injected current to the threshold current is given.     

The quantum-fluctuations of the optical parametric oscillator. II

We set up an effective Hamiltonian for an optical parametric oscillator. It contains the Bose operators of the three modes, signal, idler, and pump and their coupling to heat baths. This Hamiltonian is shown to be equivalent to a set of equations of motion, derived in a previous paper (I) from a microscopically exact Hamiltonian, provided that the heat baths are chosen in an adequate way. The comparison with the laser Hamiltonian makes clear the close analogy of the underlying elementary processes of spontaneous emission from atoms and spontaneous parametric emission from light modes in nonlinear media. The Hamiltonian is used to derive a master equation for the statistical operator of the three-mode system. In the coherent state representation this master equation transforms into an equivalentc-number Fokker-Planck equation without any approximation. The solution is obtained below threshold by linearization and above threshold by quasilinearization of the nonlinear dissipation coefficients. The results agree with those which were obtained by quantum mechanical Langevin methods in a previous paper (I).     

Thermally stimulated electron emission from chromium-doped triglycine sulfate in the paraelectric phase

Thermally stimulated electron emission from a ferroelectric chromium-doped triglycine sulfate (TGS) crystal was experimentally observed to occur in a temperature range 6 K above the Curie point from samples heated at a relatively high rate. Increasing the heating rate q was shown to cause the emission current density to increase throughout the temperature range studied. The emission onset temperature in chromium-doped TGS depends only weakly on the rate q and is close to that for pure TGS, and the emission cutoff temperature grows monotonically with q at comparatively low heating rates and stabilizes at high q. At the same time, the interval of emission extension into the paraelectric phase here is about one half that for pure TGS heated at the same rate. The specific features of emission observed for this crystal can be assigned to relaxation of the charges screening the spontaneous polarization. The lower emission cutoff temperature for the chromium-doped TGS compared to that for pure TGS is accounted for by the shorter Maxwellian relaxation time in the doped crystal.     

Tunable distributed feedback lasing with low threshold and high slope efficiency from electroluminescent conjugated polymer waveguide

We present here tunable lasing from holographic distributed feedback (DFB) resonator of electroluminescent conjugated polymer waveguide. Tunable holographic lasing from 560 to 590 nm was simply achieved by rotating a Lloyd-mirror waveguide configuration. Lasing performance for the first order (m = 1) is superior to that for the second order (m = 2). Threshold for lasing for m = 1 is in the range of 25 to 50 μJ/cm²/pulse, which is close to that for amplified spontaneous emission (ASE), and that for m = 2 is larger than 104 μJ/cm²/pulse. For m = 1, slope efficiency of 7.3% including ASE in addition to lasing emission was measured, whereas for m = 2 slope efficiency between 0.1 and 0.2% was measured.     

Investigation of optical properties of InGaN-InN-InGaN/GaN quantum-well in the green spectral regime

The optical properties of the InGaN/GaN quantum well with insertion of ultrathin InN layer is investigated by using the effective mass theory taking into account the valence band mixing effects. The total spontaneous emission radiation recombination rate can be optimized by modulating the position of InN layer in the InGaN QW. Meanwhile, it is observed that the difference of the spontaneous emission rate becomes smaller with increasing the sheet carrier density. Then, the influences of intermixing effect at the interface between InN and InGaN layers on the optical gain are analyzed. It shows the emission intensity is reduced as compared to the ideal QW structure while peak wavelength is red-shifted by ∼10 nm in the investigation range of L_sn. Finally, the influence of partial strain relaxation on the lasing wavelength is discussed, which shows a blue shift of ∼27 nm in the case with residual strain of 50% in comparison to the no strain relaxation case.     

基于TiO_2纳米粒子薄膜的低阈值随机激光器的动力学研究

本文利用共轭聚合物(MEH-PPV)覆盖TiO_2纳米粒子薄膜制作随机激光器。随机TiO_2纳米粒子薄膜的激光辐射阈值比平面MEH-PPV薄膜的放大自发辐射阈值缩小了9倍。这是由于TiO_2纳米粒子诱导的多重散射造成的。进一步的飞秒荧光上转换实验表明,随机激光器中,光在增益介质里的停留时间有所增加,这直接证实了光在随机激光器结构中的多重散射引起光的传播路径增加。因此,这会促进更多的光发生辐射,从而降低随机激光器的阈值。     

蓝紫光氮化镓光子晶体面射型激光器

设计、制作了蓝紫光氮化镓光子晶体面射型激光器结构,并测量其光学性质,探讨了光子晶体的晶格常数、边界形状及晶格种类对激光器特性的影响。激光器结构采用有机金属化学气相沉积法配合电子束光刻及感应耦合等离子体干蚀刻等技术制作。由角度解析光致发光系统测得绕射图案、激光发射光谱及发散角等光学性质。同时,使用平面波展开法及多重散射法计算光子晶体的能带结构与阈值增益。由实验结果得出,可由改变光子晶体的晶格常数达到调变激光器操作模态的目的。此外,光子晶体的边界形状对激光器波长及半高宽并无显著的影响,但圆形边界的阈值激发能量密度比六角形边界低0.3 mJ/cm²。另一方面,将六角晶格、四角晶格与蜂巢晶格的晶格种类进行比较,蜂巢晶格具有较小的激发能量密度（1.6 mJ/cm²）及发散角（1.3°）,而四角晶格的激发能量密度（3.8 mJ/cm²）及发散角（2.2°）为三者之中最大。多重散射法求得的阈值增益与实验结果相吻合,可视为快速有效设计光子晶体激光器结构的工具。本文研究成果对今后发展高功率蓝紫光氮化镓光子晶体面射型激光器具有指导意义。     

A study of the VUV emission from highly ionized krypton in a theta pinch plasma

The ionization rates of Kr(IX), (X), (XI), and (XII) have been measured using a fast 60-kV-60kJ theta pinch as a plasma source. The line emission from each ion stage has been identified and the time evolution observed. A coupled set of rate equations was used along with time- and space-resolved measurements of the electron density and temperature to model the plasma light emission. The ionization rates of Kunze were adjusted by multiplying the rate for each ion stage with a constant until the peak intensity of the calculated emission agreed with the time of the observed peak intensity. The constants required for best fit were 2.5, 0.15, 3.0, and 2.0 for Kr(IX), (X), (XI), and (XII), respectively. Two successive ionization stages, Kr(X) and Kr(XI), have shown the same time dependence and possible reasons for this observation are discussed. During the course of modeling the light emission, we have also found that the rate for the excitation from the 3dⁿ to the 3p⁵3dⁿ⁺¹ level in Kr(X) (n=9) and Kr(XI) (n=8) is a factor of 5 lower than predicted by the van Regemorter excitation rate equation.     

Threshold electron impact excitation of Cl2

A high resolution electron impact threshold spectroscopy technique was used to examine the excitation of Cl₂ in the 2–14 eV region. This study complements previous photon absorption and emission measurements, because it is capable of detecting transitions which are optically forbidden. In the region up to 7.5 eV, broad dissociative structures are correlated with optically active valence states, although relative intensities in the threshold spectrum differ considerably and indicate a substantial contribution from the optically forbidden transitions. At 7.46 eV a series of 5 equidistant sharp peaks is detected and interpreted as arising from the² π _g Feshbach resonance, which differs from the ground state positive ion Cl ₂ ⁺ by a pair of Rydberg electrons: (4sσ)². The decay channels responsible for the appearance of the resonance in a threshold spectrum are discussed and it is suggested that they include several valence states of the (2431) and (2341) configurations, whose potential energy curves cross the Cl ₂ ^? ,²π_g curve in the region of energy at which the resonance state is formed. At higher incident electron energies and up to ionisation, Rydberg states predominate, starting with (2430) 4s^3,1 π _g states detected for the first time. The absence of broad peaks above 8 eV and the irregular appearance of Rydberg bands is consistent with the strong Rydberg-valence configuration mixing proposed by Peyerimhoff and Buenker. Where our resolution permits comparison, good general agreement is found with recent synchrotron radiation absorption measurements of optically allowed transitions.     

Thermally stimulated electron emission in the paraelectric phase of triglycine sulfate crystals heated at a high rate

Thermally stimulated electron emission is experimentally observed in ferroelectric triglycine sulfate (TGS) crystals in a temperature range whose upper limit is 10–15 K above the Curie point. Samples of a nominally pure and a chromium-doped TGS crystal, heated at different constant rates q=dT/dt, are investigated. It is shown that an increase in the heating rate results in increased emission current density over the entire temperature range investigated. The temperature at which emission arises depends only slightly on the rate q. At the same time, the temperature at which emission ceases increases monotonically with increasing q; if q is less than 1 K/min, this temperature is below the Curie point, while at q=4–5 K/min, this temperature becomes as large as 60–65°C, which is more than 15°C above the Curie point. In chromium-doped TGS crystal, the electron emission onset temperature is close to that of pure TGS, but the width of the temperature range over which emission is observed in the paraelectric phase is approximately two times less than in the case of pure TGS heated at the same rate. The emission disappearance below the Curie point (in the ferroelectric phase) at low q is explained as a result of full emptying of the electron traps under slow heating. The reason for the occurrence of emission above the Curie point is related to the charges that shield the spontaneous polarization and, because of their slow relaxation, persists in the paraelectric phase.