Fundamentals of Next Generation Photonic Semiconductors: Small Lasers

This week, an illustration was published on the cover of the international journal Science, showcasing a powerful mode-locked laser emitted from a miniature photonic semiconductor.

A research team led by Alireza Marandi, a professor of electrical engineering and applied physics at the California Institute of Technology, has successfully developed a conventional mode-locked laser large enough to fit into microchips, which was published in the journal Science on the 9th local time.

MLL is a laser that generates powerful microwave light. Through microwave light, details of femtosecond and attosecond natural phenomena can now be observed, which were previously unseen.

By using these short laser pulses, microstructure that cannot be observed by an optical microscope can be identified. Imaging can be performed on the internal tissues of cancer lumps and the photosynthesis process in plant leaves. That's why MLL is also known as the foundation of modern accelerator research and technology.

However, so far, MML has only been developed in a cumbersome form, which limits its application in chip level nano optical devices that handle very little light in a very small space.

The research team has developed a "small mode locked laser" based on lithium niobate. The MML developed by the research team works at the nanoscale and measures much higher pulse energy and peak power compared to the MLL used in existing nano optical platforms.

The journal Science published the study on its cover and commented that the development of this technology will reduce the size of existing MLLs to the size of chips, stimulating the development of photonic based semiconductors that surpass existing semiconductor levels.

Photonic semiconductors use light instead of electricity and are considered the next generation technology because they can transmit data tens of times faster than existing devices while reducing power consumption. Especially, it is expected to be combined with artificial intelligence and high-performance sensors to achieve rapid information transmission and reception.

Source: Laser Network