Ultrafast and Widely Tuneable Vertical-External-Cavity
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Ultrafast and widely tuneable vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting laser, mode-locked by a graphene-integrated distributed Bragg reflector C.A. Zaugg1, Z. Sun2, V.J. Wittwer2, D. Popa2, S. Milana2, T. S. Kulmala2, R.S. Sundaram2, M. Mangold1, O.D. Sieber1, M. Golling1, Y. Lee3, J.H. Ahn3, A.C. Ferrari2, U. Keller1 1 Department of Physics, Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zürich, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 16, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland 2 Cambridge Graphene Centre, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FA, UK 3 School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749, Korea We report a versatile and cost-effective way of controlling the unsaturated loss, modulation depth and saturation fluence of graphene-based saturable absorbers (GSAs), by changing the thickness of a spacer between SLG and a high-reflection mirror. This allows us to modulate the electric field intensity enhancement at the GSA from 0 up to 400%, due to the interference of incident and reflected light at the mirror. The unsaturated loss of the SLG-mirror-assembly can be reduced to∼0. We use this to mode-lock a VECSEL from 935 to 981nm. This approach can be applied to integrate SLG into various optical components, such as output coupler mirrors, dispersive mirrors, dielectric coatings on gain materials. Conversely, it can also be used to increase absorption (up to 10%) in various graphene based photonics and optoelectronics devices, such as photodetectors. Ultrafast mode-locked lasers play an increasingly im- bandwidth material[16], due to the gapless linear disper- portant role in numerous applications, ranging from op- sion of the Dirac electrons, and has ultrafast recovery dy- tical communications[1] to medical diagnostics[2] and in- namics (<100fs)[17, 18]. Furthermore, large-area (com- dustrial material processing[3]. In particular, ultrafast pared to a typical laser spot), high quality, single layer vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VEC- graphene (SLG) can be easily grown[19] and integrated SELs), also referred to as semiconductor disk lasers in a variety of lasers[16, 20]. Graphene has emerged as (SDLs)[4] or optically pumped semiconductor lasers a promising saturable absorber (SA) for ultrafast pulse (OPSLs)[1, 2, 4], are excellent pulsed sources for various generation because of its simple, low-cost fabrication and applications, such as multi-photon microscopy[5], optical assembly[16, 21, 22], ultrafast carrier lifetime[17, 18] and data communications[4], supercontinuum generation[6] broadband absorption[16, 23, 24]. The unsaturated loss and ultra-compact stabilized frequency combs [2, 4]. In (i.e. the loss of a device at low incident power) of a typ- such lasers, light propagates perpendicular to the semi- ical intracavity transmission device based on single layer conductor gain layers[4]. In contrast to vertical-cavity graphene (SLG) is typically ∼2×2.3% (the factor 2 ac- surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs)[7], a VECSEL consists counting for the double-pass per round-trip) for the most of an external cavity, formed by high-reflection mirrors, common linear cavities[25, 26]. While this allows to use and an output coupler, with typical cavity lengths of a SLG as SA (GSA) to mode-lock a variety of lasers, such few mm up to tens cm[1, 2]. The gain chip generally as fiber[21, 22], solid-state[16, 26] and waveguide[27], it contains a highly reflective bottom section to reflect the poses serious limitations for VECSELs[2]. These typi- laser and pump light, an active semiconductor gain sec- cally require a SA mirror with losses<3%[28] because the tion in the middle, and an anti-reflective top layer[1, 2, 4]. small-signal gain (i.e. the optical gain for a low-intensity VECSELs combine the advantages of semiconductor laser signal where no saturation occurs during amplification) technology, such as compact footprint (down to∼3mm of VECSELs suitable for mode-locking is∼3 to 5%[28]. cavity length[8]), with the benefits of diode pumped solid- Thus, inserting a SLG-based device (e.g. SLG on a state lasers, such as low timing jitter[9], excellent beam quartz substrate[26]) inhibits lasing, due to the high loss arXiv:1310.2132v1 [cond-mat.mtrl-sci] 8 Oct 2013 quality[10], high average[10, 11] and peak power[6, 12]. induced by the∼4.6% absorption incurred in the double- Currently, semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors pass per cavity round-trip. (SESAMs)[1] are used for passive mode-locking, since To realize VECSEL mode-locking with graphene it is they offer advantages such as an excellent ratio of thus crucial to reduce the losses per cavity roundtrip saturable to non-saturable losses (e.g.50:1[13]) and a to<3% (i.e.<1.5% for single pass) while maintaining high high damage threshold (>0.21J/cm2)[13]. However, (in the range of 0.5-2%[4]) modulation depth (i.e. the SESAMs, epitaxially grown on lattice-matched semicon- maximum absorption change induced by changing the ductor substrates[1], only offer a limited operation band- intensity of the incident light) over a spectral range width (to date, the broadest tuning range of VECSELs wide enough to have a sufficient modulation for the mode-locked with SESAMs is 13.7nm[14]) and have a self-starting passive mode-locking of broadband VEC- fast recovery time ranging from several hundreds fs[15] to SELs. Different methods can be used to reduce the tens ps[13]. Graphene, on the other hand, is the widest absorption in graphene: Doping[24, 29] or gating[30] 2 a d b c =4 abs DBR DBR DBR 4 4 4 4 DBR 2 2 2 2 | | | | E E E E 3 3 3 3 2 Norm. | E | 2 2 2 2 Graphene GaAs AlAs SiO 1 Refractive index, | index, Refractive 1 1 Refractive index, | index, Refractive | index, Refractive 1 Refractive index, | index, Refractive 2 =0.5 =1.3 abs abs =0 abs 0 0 0 0 -200 0 200 -200 0 200 -200 0 200 -200 0 200 z (nm) z (nm) z (nm) z (nm) e f 10 10 Calculated Meas. with F setup 4 4 sat abs abs no SiO 8 8 2 3 /12 SiO 3 2 2 2 2 2 6 6 /8 SiO 2 2 2 /8 SiO /8 SiO /4 /4 SiO 2 /12 SiO /12 no SiO no 4 4 1 1 2 Linear absorption (%) absorption Linear Linear absorption (%) absorption Linear 2 Field enhancement enhancement Field Field enhancement enhancement Field 0 0 0 0 930 940 950 960 970 980 990 0 50 100 150 SiO thickness (nm) W avelength ( nm) 2 Figure 1: DBR-GSAM design. Schematic zoom into the last mirror pairs with (a) no SiO2, (b) λ/12 (55 nm) SiO2, (c) λ/8 (83 nm) SiO2 and (d) λ/4 (165 nm) SiO2. The blue curve represents the normalized standing electric field intensity resulting from the refractive index profile, as a function of the vertical distance from the mirror, for the design wavelength λ=960nm. A SLG is placed as the last layer. (e) (left axis) linear absorption and (right axis) field intensity enhancement at the SLG location corresponding to the DBRs without SiO2 (ξabs=0), a λ/12 layer of SiO2 (ξabs=0.5), a λ/8 layer (ξabs=1.3) and a λ/4 layer (ξabs=4). (f) (lines) calculated and (dots) experimental ξabs and absorption of the four designs as a function of wavelength. can decrease the absorption over a broad spectral range incoming and reflected waves off a mirror, form a stand- by Pauli blocking according to[24, 26]: A (λ, T ) = ing wave beyond the mirror surface. The field intensity 2 2 hc E hc − E π e λ +2 F λ 2 F enhancement ξ(z) at a distance z from the mirror can be hc tanh k T + tanh k T , where T is the 4 B 4 B written as[29, 31]: temperatureh and EFis the Fermi level.i So, e.g., to have 1.5% absorption at∼960nm (the working wavelength of |E (z)+ E (z)|2 our laser) one would need to stably shift the Fermi level in out ξ (z)= 2 , (1) by∼630meV. However, it is challenging to precisely con- |Ein (z)| trol this high doping level. Gating usually needs extra electrical contacts and drivers, which increase the com- where Eout and Ein are the reflected and incident wave plexity of the system. electric fields. For an anti-resonant high-reflection (∼ 100%) mirror with no additional coating, we get (see Here, we change the absorption by controlling the Methods): electric field intensity in SLG on a high-reflection mir- ror. The resulting SLG-based saturable absorber mirrors 2 2πnairz (GSAMs) have an unsaturated loss adjustable from 0 up ξ(z) ≈ 4 sin , (2) λ to 10% and modulation depth up to 5%. These enable us to mode-lock a VECSEL, at the same time exploiting where λ is the wavelength, nair is the refractive index the broadband properties of graphene, thus allowing the of air. Therefore, the SLG absorption can be tuned by widest wavelength-tuning thus far reported in VECSELs. changing the optical distance between SLG and the mir- ror surface. The SLG absorption (A) becomes A = αξabs, The GSAM absorption is controlled as follows. The where α ∼ 2.3% is the absorption of a suspended and 3 a b 100 96 Graphene on Cu 92 no SiO 2 /12 SiO 88 2 Graphene Intensity (a.u.) Intensity Transmittance (%) Transmittance Quartz /8 SiO 2 84 Graphene on Quartz /4 SiO 2 80 0.4 0.8 1.2 1.6 2.0 2.4 1500 2000 2500 3000 -1 Raman shift (cm ) W avelength ( m) c d 2 100 96 R = 0.2 % max R = 94.9 % J/cm ns 95 98 94 Meas.