High-speed modulation of a terahertz quantum cascade laser by coherent acoustic phonon pulses

Aniela Dunn (), Caroline Poyser, Paul Dean, Aleksandar Demić, Alexander Valavanis, Dragan Indjin, Mohammed Salih, Iman Kundu, Lianhe Li, Andrey Akimov, Alexander Giles Davies, Edmund Linfield, John Cunningham and Anthony Kent
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Aniela Dunn: University of Leeds
Caroline Poyser: University of Nottingham
Paul Dean: University of Leeds
Aleksandar Demić: University of Leeds
Alexander Valavanis: University of Leeds
Dragan Indjin: University of Leeds
Mohammed Salih: University of Leeds
Iman Kundu: University of Leeds
Lianhe Li: University of Leeds
Andrey Akimov: University of Nottingham
Alexander Giles Davies: University of Leeds
Edmund Linfield: University of Leeds
John Cunningham: University of Leeds
Anthony Kent: University of Nottingham

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract The fast modulation of lasers is a fundamental requirement for applications in optical communications, high-resolution spectroscopy and metrology. In the terahertz-frequency range, the quantum-cascade laser (QCL) is a high-power source with the potential for high-frequency modulation. However, conventional electronic modulation is limited fundamentally by parasitic device impedance, and so alternative physical processes must be exploited to modulate the QCL gain on ultrafast timescales. Here, we demonstrate an alternative mechanism to modulate the emission from a QCL device, whereby optically-generated acoustic phonon pulses are used to perturb the QCL bandstructure, enabling fast amplitude modulation that can be controlled using the QCL drive current or strain pulse amplitude, to a maximum modulation depth of 6% in our experiment. We show that this modulation can be explained using perturbation theory analysis. While the modulation rise-time was limited to ~800 ps by our measurement system, theoretical considerations suggest considerably faster modulation could be possible.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-14662-w

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