Dual-wavelength external-cavity surface-emitting laser

Abstract

Dual-wavelength laser sources have important applications in the interferometry and the nonlinear-frequency-conversion generated mid-infrared or terahertz-band coherent radiation. Vertical-external-cavity surface-emitting lasers own outstanding advantages such as high output power, good beam quality and flexible emission wavelength, which make them very suitable for dual-wavelength running. In this paper, we employ a collinear Y-type cavity to produce a dual-wavelength laser. There are two semiconductor gain chips in the resonant cavity, one has an active region of In_0.185Ga_0.815As/GaAs strained multiple quantum wells and a designed wavelength of 960 nm, and the other has an active region of In_0.26Ga_0.74As/GaAsP_0.02 strained multiple quantum wells and a target wavelength of 1080 nm. The peak wavelength of the photoluminescence of chip 1 is 950 nm, which is 10 nm shorter than the designed wavelength under weak pump, and the peak wavelength of the photoluminescence of chip 2 is 1094 nm, which is 14 nm longer than the target wavelength under low pump. When the pump power is increased, the peak wavelengths of the photoluminescence of two gain chips are both red-shifted. The oscillating laser wavelengths are centered at 953 nm and 1100 nm, the corresponding full width at half maximum (FWHM) values of the laser spectra are 1.1 nm and 2.7 nm, respectively. The wavelength spacing of the dual-wavelength is 147 nm, and the related mid-infrared coherent radiation is about 7.1 μm on the assumption that the dual-wavelength laser is used for difference frequency generation. When the absorbed pump power of each gain chip is 5.8 W, the total output power of the dual-wavelength laser reaches 293 mW at room temperature.