Physics and applications of quantum dot lasers for silicon photonics

Nanophotonics

article

Frédéric Grillot¹  Justin C. Norman³  Jianan Duan¹  Zeyu Zhang³  Bozhang Dong¹  Heming Huang¹  Weng W. Chow⁴  John E. Bowers³ 

[1] Institut Polytechnique de Paris;Center for High Technology Materials, University of New Mexico;Materials and Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments, University of California;Sandia National Laboratories

关键词: dynamical instabilities;    nanostructures;    quantum dots;    semiconductor lasers;    silicon photonics;   

DOI  :  10.1515/nanoph-2019-0570

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: De Gruyter

【 摘 要 】

Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) have enabled numerous high performance, energy efficient, and compact technologies for optical communications, sensing, and metrology. One of the biggest challenges in scaling PICs comes from the parasitic reflections that feed light back into the laser source. These reflections increase noise and may cause laser destabilization. To avoid parasitic reflections, expensive and bulky optical isolators have been placed between the laser and the rest of the PIC leading to large increases in device footprint for on-chip integration schemes and significant increases in packaging complexity and cost for lasers co-packaged with passive PICs. This review article reports new findings on epitaxial quantum dot lasers on silicon and studies both theoretically and experimentally the connection between the material properties and the ultra-low reflection sensitivity that is achieved. Our results show that such quantum dot lasers on silicon exhibit much lower linewidth enhancement factors than any quantum well lasers. Together with the large damping factor, we show that the quantum dot gain medium is fundamentally dependent on dot uniformity, but through careful optimization, even epitaxial lasers on silicon can operate without an optical isolator, which is of paramount importance for the future high-speed silicon photonic systems.

【 授权许可】

CC BY