Nonlinear Dynamics in Semiconductor Lasers 2023 - Abstract
Grillot, Frederic
Interband cascade lasers (ICLs) constitutes a new class of semiconductor lasers allowing lasing emission in the 3? 10 μm wavelength region. Their structure presents similarities and differences with respect to both standard bipolar semiconductor lasers and quantum cascade lasers (QCLs). In contrast to QCLs, the stimulated emission of ICLs relies on the interband transition of type-II quantum wells while the carrier to photon lifetime ratio is similar to conventional bipolar lasers. Therefore, ICLs can be classified into Class-B laser systems like common quantum well lasers, and hence are more prone for generating complex dynamic like fully-developed chaos. Moreover, ICLs take advantage of a cascading mechanism over repeated active regions, which allows us to boost the quantum efficiency and, thus, the emitted optical power. Consequently, the power consumption of ICLs is one or two orders of magnitude lower than their QCL counterparts whereas high-power of few hundreds of milliWatts can be achieved. Here, we report some recent results on dynamic and nonlinear properties of ICLs. In particular, we demonstrate the generation of fully-developed chaos of ICLs with a perturbation of external optical feedback. We show that ICLs exhibit some peculiar intensity noise features with a clear relaxation oscillation frequency. Together, these properties are of paramount importance for developing long-reach secure free-space communications, random bite generator, and remote chaotic Lidar systems. Lastly, we predict that ICLs are preferable devices for the amplitude-noise squeezing because large amplitude noise reduction is attainable through inherent high quantum efficiency and short photon and electron lifetimes.