A hallmark of spin-lasers, injected with spin-polarized carriers, is their threshold behavior with the onset of stimulated emission. Unlike the single threshold in conventional lasers with unpolarized carriers, two thresholds are expected in spin lasers. With the progress in scaled-down lasers and the use of novel two-dimensional materials it is unclear if the common description of spin lasers assuming a negligible spontaneous emission and linear optical gain remains relevant or even how to identify the lasing thresholds. Our rate-equation description addresses these questions by considering a large spontaneous emission and a nonlinear optical gain. We provide a transparent approach and analytical results to explore the resulting threshold behavior, its deviation from the prior studies, as well as guide future spin-lasers as a versatile platform for spintronics beyond magnetoresistance.
We propose a method to overcome Auger recombination in nanocrystal quantum dot lasers using cavity-enhanced spontaneous emission. We derive a numerical model for a laser composed of nanocrystal quantum dots coupled to optical nanocavities with small mode-volume. Using this model, we demonstrate that spontaneous emission enhancement of the biexciton transition lowers the lasing threshold by reducing the effect of Auger recombination. We analyze a photonic crystal nanobeam cavity laser as a realistic device structure that implements the proposed approach.
We report on the simultaneous observation of spontaneous symmetry breaking and long-range spatial coherence both in the strong and the weak-coupling regime in a semiconductor microcavity. Under pulsed excitation, the formation of a stochastic order parameter is observed in polariton and photon lasing regimes. Single-shot measurements of the Stokes vector of the emission exhibit the buildup of stochastic polarization. Below threshold, the polarization noise does not exceed 10%, while above threshold we observe a total polarization of up to 50% after each excitation pulse, while the polarization…
In contrast to conventional structures, efficient non-radiative carrier recombination counteracts the appearance of optical gain in graphene. Based on a microscopic and fully quantum-mechanical study of the coupled carrier, phonon, and photon dynamics in graphene, we present a strategy to obtain a long-lived gain: Integrating graphene into a photonic crystal nanocavity and applying a high-dielectric substrate gives rise to pronounced coherent light emission suggesting the design of graphene-based laser devices covering a broad spectral range.
Two-dimensional graphene plasmon-based technologies will enable the development of fast, compact and inexpensive active photonic elements because, unlike plasmons in other materials, graphene plasmons can be tuned via the doping level. Such tuning is harnessed within terahertz quantum cascade lasers to reversibly alter their emission. This is achieved in two key steps: First by exciting graphene plasmons within an aperiodic lattice laser and, second, by engineering photon lifetimes, linking graphene's Fermi energy with the round-trip gain. Modal gain and hence laser spectra are highly sensitiv…
In analogy with equilibrium phase transitions, we address the problem of the instability to symmetry-breaking perturbations of systems undergoing a laser transition. The symmetry in question is the $U(1)$ invariance with respect to a phase factor, and the perturbation is a coherent field $E$, coupled to the exciton. At the rate equation level we analyze first the case of a cavity containing a single, two-level emitter, and then a chain of such cavities interacting by photon hopping processes. In both cases spontaneous symmetry breaking takes place when the system is in the lasing phase. For th…
Employing an ensemble Monte Carlo transport simulation, we self-consistently analyze the spectral gain for different THz quantum cascade laser structures, considering bound-to-continuum as well as resonant phonon depopulation designs. In this context, we investigate temperature dependent gain broadening, affecting the temperature performance of THz structures. Furthermore, we discuss the influence of the individual scattering mechanisms, such as electron-electron, impurity and interface roughness scattering. A comparison of the simulation results to experimental data yields good agreement.
In a recent Letter [Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 1015 (2003)], Williams et al. reported the development of a terahertz quantum cascade laser operating at 3.4 THz or 14.2 meV. We have calculated and analyzed the gain spectra of the quantum cascade structure described in their work, and in addition to gain at the reported lasing energy of ~= 14 meV, we have discovered substantial gain at a much lower energy of around 5 meV or just over 1 THz. This suggests an avenue for the development of a terahertz laser at this lower energy, or of a two-color terahertz laser.
We report gain calculations for a quantum cascade laser using a fully self-consistent quantum mechanical approach based on the theory of nonequilibrium Green functions. Both the absolute value of the gain as well as the spectral position at threshold are in excellent agreement with experimental findings for T=77 K. The gain strongly decreases with temperature.
We study the rapid decrease of peak gain in resonant-phonon THz Quantum Cascade Lasers with increasing temperature. The effect of various microscopic scattering processes on the gain profile as a function of temperature is discussed. We argue that increased broadening, primarily due to increased impurity scattering, and not diminishing population inversion, is the main reason for the reduction of peak gain.
Although nanolasers typically have low Q-factors and high lasing thresholds, they have been successfully implemented with various gain media. Intuitively, it seems that an increase in the gain coefficient would improve the characteristics of nanolasers. For a plasmonic nanolaser, in particular, a distributed-feed-back (DFB) laser, we propose a self-consistent model that takes into account both spontaneous emission and the multimode character of laser generation to show that for a given pumping strength, the gain coefficient has an optimal value at which the radiation intensity is at a maximum …
Nanolasers operate with a minimal amount of active material and low losses. In this regime, single layers of transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are being investigated as next generation gain materials due to their high quantum efficiency. We provide results from microscopic gain calculations of highly excited TMD monolayers and specify requirements to achieve lasing with four commonly used TMD semiconductors. Our approach includes band-structure renormalizations due to excited carriers that trigger a direct-to-indirect band-gap transition. As a consequence, we predict a rollover for the g…
This paper discusses the temperature-dependent properties of (GaIn)As/Ga(AsSb)/(GaIn)As W-quantum well heterostructures for laser applications based on theoretical modeling as well as experimental findings. A microscopic theory is applied to discuss band bending effects giving rise to the characteristic blue shift with increasing charge carrier density observed in type-II heterostructures. Furthermore, gain spectra for a W-quantum well heterostructure are calculated up to high charge carrier densities. At these high charge carrier densities, the interplay between multiple type-II transitions r…
We compute the statistics of thermal emission from systems in which the radiation is scattered chaotically, by relating the photocount distribution to the scattering matrix - whose statistical properties are known from random-matrix theory. We find that the super-Poissonian noise is that of a black body with a reduced number of degrees of freedom. The general theory is applied to a disordered slab and to a chaotic cavity, and is extended to include amplifying as well as absorbing systems. We predict an excess noise of amplified spontaneous emission in a random laser below the laser threshold.
Transport and gain properties of a resonant-phonon terahertz quantum cascade laser are calculated using nonequilibrium Green's functions. Impurity scattering is shown to be responsible for contrasting nonlinear effects in the transport and the gain properties. For typical doping concentrations, the current density is found to be weakly sensitive to the impurity scattering strength. In contrast, the calculated gain is found to be very sensitive to the impurity scattering strength. This difference is attributed to the strong momentum dependence of the long-range coupling to charged impurities. S…
We propose a nano-scale realization of a phonon laser utilizing phonon-assisted spin flips in quantum dots to amplify sound. Owing to a long spin relaxation time, the device can be operated in a strong pumping regime, in which the population inversion is close to its maximal value allowed under Fermi statistics. In this regime, the threshold for stimulated emission is unaffected by spontaneous spin flips. Considering a nanowire with quantum dots defined along its length, we show that a further improvement arises from confining the phonons to one dimension, and thus reducing the number of phono…
We develop a quantum model for the calculation of the gain of phonon-polariton intersubband lasers. The polaritonic gain arizes from the interaction between the electrons confined in a quantum well structure and the phonon confined in one layer of the material. Our theoretical approach is based on expressing the crucial matter excitations (intersubband electrons and phonons) in terms of polarisation densities in second quantisation, and treating all non-resonant polarisations with an effective dielectric function. The interaction between the electronic and phononic polarizations is treated per…
A multi-quantum wire laser operating in the 1-D ground state has been achieved in a very high uniformity structure that shows free exciton emission with unprecedented narrow width and low lasing threshold. Under optical pumping the spontaneous emission evolves from a sharp free exciton peak to a red-shifted broad band. The lasing photon energy occurs about 5 meV below the free exciton. The observed shift excludes free excitons in lasing and our results show that Coulomb interactions in the 1-D electron-hole system shift the spontaneous emission and play significant roles in laser gain.
Gain in current-driven semiconductor heterostructure devices is calculated within the theory of nonequilibrium Green functions. In order to treat the nonequilibrium distribution self-consistently the full two-time structure of the theory is employed without relying on any sort of Kadanoff-Baym Ansatz. The results are independent of the choice of the electromagnetic field if the variation of the self-energy is taken into account. Excellent quantitative agreement is obtained with the experimental gain spectrum of a quantum cascade laser. Calculations for semiconductor superlattices show that the…
Nanocavity lasers are commonly characterized by the spontaneous coupling coefficient $β$ that represents the fraction of photons emitted into the lasing mode. While $β$ is conventionally discussed in semiconductor lasers where the photon lifetime is much shorter than the carrier lifetime (class-B lasers), little is known about $β$ in atomic lasers where the photon lifetime is much longer than the other lifetimes and only the photon degree of freedom exists (class-A lasers). We investigate the impact of the spontaneous coupling coefficient $β$ on lasing properties in the class-A limit by extend…
The link between the inversion gain of quantum cascade structures and the Bloch gain in periodic superlattices is presented. The proposed theoretical model based on the density matrix formalism is able to treat the gain mechanism of the Bloch oscillator and Quantum cascade laser on the same footing by taking into account in-plane momentum relaxation. The model predicts a dispersive contribution in addition to the (usual) population-inversion-dependent intersubband gain in quantum cascade structures and - in the absence of inversion - provides the quantum mechanical description for the dispersi…
The linewidth in intersubband transitions can be significantly reduced below the sum of the lifetime broadening for the involved states, if the scattering environment is similar for both states. This is studied within a nonequilibrium Green function approach here. We find that the effect is of particular relevance for a recent, relatively low doped, THz quantum cascade laser.
