Coupled terahertz quantum cascade wire lasers

Abstract

We present mutual optical coupling in terahertz (THz) quantum cascade wire laser arrays that are flip-chip bonded to a dielectric substrate. The mounting substrate is patterned for individual electrical contacting of each wire laser of the array. The resulting sandwich-like structure supports wire laser modes with a significant part propagating outside the cavity and mediates the long range coupling. The evanescent field part of the modes couples to the adjoining ridge, which, in turn, leads to mutual optical injection-locking between them. We demonstrate this effect for both geometrically similar and dissimilar wire lasers when biased in pulsed operation with temporally overlapping bias pulses. Finite element simulations confirm our measurement results. By applying time-shifted bias pulses to individual array elements, a controllable optical injection seeding of the wire cavity is achieved. We observe intensity modification of the laser modes with changing bias pulse overlap as a result of the injection locking. By choosing both the physical spacing of the laser ridges and the intensity of the seeding laser correctly, the relative intensities of the favored lasing modes are enhanced up to 95 percent. Understanding the coupling in THz wire laser arrays is important for future device improvements in terms of higher continuous-wave operating temperatures through better thermal dissipation, and higher output power and an improved far field due to controlled coupling of their modes.