High-speed operation of gain-switched mid-infrared quantum cascade lasers

Roberto Paiella, Federico Capasso, Claire Gmachl, Clyde G. Bethea, Deborah L. Sivco, Albert L. Hutchinson, Alfred Y. Cho

Research output: Contribution to journalConference articlepeer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

A gain-switched quantum cascade (QC) laser is developed to generate pulses with less than 200 psec duration at 8 μm. Gain switching is a technique for the generation of picosecond light pulses from injection layers, which relies on the rapid depletion of the gain-medium population inversion following a short-lived electrical excitation. The QC laser is gain-switched with a commercial `comb' generator consisting of a step recovery diode and filtering reactive elements. When driven at half a watt of radio frequency power, this device generates a train of short negative electrical pulses, each with a duration of approximately 140 psec, and an amplitude of more than 20 V across a 50 Ω load; the repetition rate is set by a 100 MHz driving frequency.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)11-12
Number of pages2
JournalConference Proceedings - Lasers and Electro-Optics Society Annual Meeting-LEOS
Volume1
StatePublished - 1999
Externally publishedYes
EventProceedings of the 1999 12th Annual Meeting IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society (LEOS'99) - San Francisco, CA, USA
Duration: Nov 8 1999Nov 11 1999

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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