PhD Defense: Hong Cai

TITLE: Optical Measurement on Quantum Cascade Lasers Using Femtosecond Pulses ABSTRACT: Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) as the state-of-the-art mid-infrared (mid-IR) coherent sources have been greatly developed in aspects such as output power, energy efficiency and spectral purity. However, there are additional applications of QCLs in high demand, namely mode-locking, mid-IR modulation, etc.. The inherent optical properties and ultrafast carrier dynamics can lead to solutions to these challenges. In this dissertation, we further characterize QCLs using mid-IR femtosecond (fs) pulses generated from a laser system consistig of a Ti:sapphire oscillator, a Ti:sapphire regenerative amplifier, an optical parametric amplifier and a difference frequency generator. We study the Kerr nonlinearity of QCLs by coupling resonant and off-resonant mid-IR fs pulses into an active QCL waveguide. We observe an increase in the spectral width of the transmitted fs pulses as the coupled mid-IR pulse power increases. This is explained by the self-phase modulation effect due to the large Kerr nonlinearity of QCL waveguides. We further confirm this effect by observing the intensity dependent far-field profile of the transmitted mid-IR pulses, showing the pulses undergo self-focusing as they propagate through the active QCL due to the intensity dependent refractive index. The finite-difference time-domain simulations of QCL waveguides with Kerr nonlinearity incorporated show similar behavior to the experimental results. The giant Kerr nonlinearity investigated here may be used to realize ultrafast pulse generation in QCLs. In addition, we temporally resolved the ultrafast mid-infrared transmission modulation of QCLs using a near-infrared pump/mid-infrared probe technique at room temperature. Two different femtosecond wavelength pumps are used with photon energy above and below the quantum well (QW) bandgap. The shorter wavelength pump modulates the mid-infrared probe transmission through interband transition assisted mechanisms, resulting in a high transmission modulation depth and several nanoseconds recovery lifetime. In contrast, pumping with a photon energy below the QW bandgap induces a smaller transmission modulation depth but much faster (several picoseconds) recovery lifetime, attributed to intersubband transition assisted mechanisms. The latter ultrafast modulation (>60 GHz) can provide a potential way to realize fast QCL based free space optical communication.