Fourier Optics for Wavefront Engineering and Wavelength Control of Lasers
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Fourier optics for wavefront engineering and wavelength control of lasers The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Blanchard, Romain. 2014. Fourier optics for wavefront engineering and wavelength control of lasers. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11744450 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Fourier optics for wavefront engineering and wavelength control of lasers A dissertation presented by Romain Blanchard to The School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Applied Physics Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts October 2013 c 2013 - Romain Blanchard All rights reserved. Professor Federico Capasso Romain Blanchard Fourier optics for wavefront engineering and wavelength control of lasers Abstract Since their initial demonstration in 1994, quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) have become prominent sources of mid-infrared radiation. Over the years, a large scientific and engi- neering effort has led to a dramatic improvement in their efficiency and power output, with continuous wave operation at room temperature and Watt-level output power now standard. However, beyond this progress, new functionalities and capabilities need to be added to this compact source to enable its integration into consumer-ready systems. Two main areas of development are particularly relevant from an application standpoint and were pursued during the course of this thesis: wavelength control and wavefront engineering of QCLs. The first research direction, wavelength control, is mainly driven by spectroscopic applications of QCLs, such as trace gas sensing, process monitoring or explosive detection. We demonstrated three different capabilities, corresponding to different potential spectroscopic measurement techniques: widely tunable single longi- tudinal mode lasing, simultaneous lasing on multiple well-defined longitudinal modes, iii and simultaneous lasing over a broad and continuous range of the spectrum. The second research direction, wavefront engineering of QCLs, i.e. the improvement of their beam quality, is relevant for applications necessitating transmission of the QCL output over a large distance, for example for remote sensing or military countermeasures. To address this issue, we developed plasmonic lenses directly integrated on the facets of QCLs. The plasmonic structures designed are analogous to antenna arrays imparting directionality to the QCLs, as well as providing means for polarization control. Finally, a research interest in plasmonics led us to design passive flat optical elements using plasmonic an- tennas. All these projects are tied together by the involvement of Fourier analysis as an essential design tool to predict the interaction of light with various gratings and periodic arrays of grooves and scatterers. iv Contents Abstract iii List of Figures ix Acknowledgements xiii 1 Introduction 2 1.1 Quantum cascade lasers ............................ 2 1.2 Adding functionalities to quantum cascade lasers .............. 7 1.3 Overview of thesis work ............................ 8 1.3.1 Wavelength control of quantum cascade lasers ............ 8 1.3.2 Wavefront control of quantum cascade lasers ............ 10 1.3.3 Design of passive flat optical elements using plasmonic antennas . 11 1.4 Fourier optics .................................. 12 I Wavelength control of QCLs 14 2 Introduction to broadband quantum cascade lasers 15 2.1 Quantum cascade lasers with broadband gain ................ 15 2.2 Tunable single-mode operation ........................ 17 2.3 Simultaneous multi-band lasing ........................ 19 2.4 Simultaneous broadband lasing ........................ 20 3 Multi-wavelength quantum cascade lasers 21 3.1 Introduction to distributed feedback gratings for singlemode lasing . 21 3.2 Sampled gratings ................................ 22 3.2.1 Fourier analysis of sampled gratings ................. 22 3.2.2 Single-mode lasing using sampled grating reflectors ......... 24 3.3 Gratings with an aperiodic basis ....................... 29 3.3.1 Description ............................... 29 3.3.2 Alternative multi-wavelength gratings ................ 31 v Contents 3.3.3 Scattering losses ............................ 33 3.3.4 Design and fabrication ......................... 34 3.3.5 Experimental results .......................... 38 3.3.6 Conclusion ............................... 41 4 Mode switching in a multi-wavelength distributed feedback quantum cascade laser using an external micro-cavity 43 4.1 Motivation ................................... 44 4.2 Description of the experiment ......................... 45 4.3 External feedback for a single-mode QCL .................. 46 4.4 External feedback for a multi-mode QCL .................. 48 4.5 Simulation results ............................... 51 4.6 Conclusion ................................... 55 5 Double-waveguide quantum cascade laser for broadband emission 57 5.1 Motivation ................................... 57 5.2 Design of a double-waveguide QCL ...................... 58 5.3 Experimental results .............................. 61 5.4 Conclusion ................................... 65 II Wavefront engineering of QCLs 66 6 Introduction to plasmonic collimators 67 6.1 Motivation ................................... 67 6.2 Plasmonic collimators ............................. 68 6.3 Non-symmetric plasmonic gratings ...................... 70 7 Dipolar modeling of plasmonic collimators 71 7.1 Introduction ................................... 71 7.2 Basics of the model ............................... 73 7.3 Far-field radiation pattern ........................... 75 7.4 Grating design ................................. 76 8 Experimental demonstration of multi-beam plasmonic collimators 78 8.1 Design of elliptical plasmonic gratings for off-axis collimation ....... 78 8.2 Collimator fabrication ............................. 81 8.3 Experimental results .............................. 81 8.3.1 Single beam emission .......................... 81 8.3.2 Multi beam emission .......................... 83 8.3.3 Polarization of the emitted light ................... 84 8.4 Conclusion ................................... 85 vi Contents 9 High-power low-divergence tapered quantum cascade lasers with plas- monic collimators 86 9.1 Overview .................................... 86 9.2 Design and fabrication of tapered quantum cascade lasers ......... 87 9.3 Optimization of the power output using facet coatings ........... 92 9.4 Plasmonic collimator on the facet of high power quantum cascade lasers . 97 9.5 Conclusion ...................................100 III Design of passive flat optical elements in the infrared 101 10 Multi-wavelength mid-infrared plasmonic antennas with single nanoscale focal point 102 10.1 Introduction ...................................102 10.2 Photonic-plasmonic coupling .........................104 10.3 Design of a photonic-plasmonic antenna ...................105 10.4 Fabrication and far-field characterization ...................110 10.5 Multi-wavelength antenna and near-field imaging ..............117 10.6 Conclusion ...................................123 11 Modeling nanoscale V-shaped antennas for the design of optical phased arrays 124 11.1 Introduction ...................................124 11.2 Method and approximations ..........................126 11.3 Results ......................................130 11.3.1 Comparison with FDTD ........................130 11.3.2 Current distribution ..........................136 11.3.3 Far-field radiation pattern .......................140 11.4 Conclusion ...................................142 Appendix 142 A Threshold gain simulation for external cavity quantum cascade lasers143 A.1 Feedback from external mirror ........................143 A.2 Calculation method ...............................144 B Numerical details on V-shaped antenna modeling 149 B.1 General problem ................................149 B.2 V-shaped antennas ...............................155 B.3 Numerical solution ...............................159 B.4 Modeling real metals ..............................164 B.5 Far-field calculation ..............................165 B.6 FDTD simulation details ............................166 vii Contents Published work 168 Bibliography 174 viii List of Figures 1.1 Principal characteristics of an interband transition and an intersubband transition in a quantum well. ......................... 4 1.2 Schematic conduction band diagram of a quantum cascade laser. ..... 6 3.1 Schematic of a sampled grating in real-space and Fourier-space. ...... 23 3.2 Schematic of a typical sampled grating DBR laser and basic tuning mech- anism. ...................................... 25 3.3 Simulated reflectivity spectra of the two SGRs and their product. ..... 27 3.4 Schematic of a grating with an aperiodic basis. ............... 30 3.5 Schematic of grating scattering. ........................ 32 3.6 Fourier transform and reflection spectrum of a grating with an aperiodic basis. ....................................... 35 3.7 Experimental results for the five-wavelength grating design. ........ 39