High-pulse-energy integrated mode-locked laser using a Mamyshev oscillator

Area of Science:

• Photonics and Ultrafast Lasers
• Integrated Optics
• Materials Science

Background:

• Ultrafast lasers are crucial for scientific and technological advancements, including surgery and chemical dynamics.
• Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) offer compact, scalable laser solutions, but existing designs lack sufficient pulse energy for nonlinear processes.
• Previous PIC-based mode-locked lasers have been limited by low pulse energy, hindering applications like supercontinuum generation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate a high-pulse-energy mode-locked laser on a photonic integrated circuit.
• To overcome the limitations of existing PIC-based lasers for nonlinear optical applications.
• To showcase the potential of integrated ultrafast lasers for spectroscopy and metrology.

Main Methods:

• Utilized erbium-ion-implanted silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits.
• Employed the Mamyshev oscillator architecture for mode-locking.
• Integrated spectral filtering and self-phase modulation for enhanced nonlinear performance.

Main Results:

• Achieved a 176-MHz pulse train with nanojoule pulse energy, two orders of magnitude higher than previous PICs.
• Demonstrated a 1.5-octave-spanning supercontinuum generation directly in a Si3N4 waveguide.
• Developed a compact terahertz time-domain spectrometer with 5 THz bandwidth and 90 dB dynamic range.

Conclusions:

• The developed integrated ultrafast laser provides high pulse energy, overcoming previous limitations of PIC-based sources.
• This technology enables chip-scale frequency metrology and portable spectroscopy systems.
• The high-performance integrated laser opens new avenues for advanced optical applications.