Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Raman injection laser

Nature volume 433, pages 845–848 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

Stimulated Raman scattering is a nonlinear optical process that, in a broad variety of materials, enables the generation of optical gain at a frequency that is shifted from that of the incident radiation by an amount corresponding to the frequency of an internal oscillation of the material1,2. This effect is the basis for a broad class of tunable sources known as Raman lasers2,3. In general, these sources have only small gain (∼ 10-9 cm W-1) and therefore require external pumping with powerful lasers, which limits their applications. Here we report the realization of a semiconductor injection Raman laser designed to circumvent these limitations. The physics underlying our device differs in a fundamental way from existing Raman lasers3,4,5,6,7,8: it is based on triply resonant stimulated Raman scattering between quantum-confined states within the active region of a quantum cascade laser that serves as an internal optical pump—the device is driven electrically and no external laser pump is required. This leads to an enhancement of orders of magnitude in the Raman gain, high conversion efficiency and low threshold. Our lasers combine the advantages of nonlinear optical devices and of semiconductor injection lasers, and could lead to a new class of compact and wavelength-agile mid-and far-infrared light sources.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Diagrams showing the Raman effect and the band structure design.
Figure 2: Spectral characteristics.
Figure 3: Power output and temperature dependence.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Boyd, R. W. Nonlinear Optics (Academic, New York, 1992)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Shen, Y. R. The Principles of Nonlinear Optics (John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, 1984)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Pask, H. M. The design and operation of solid-state Raman lasers. Prog. Quant. Electron. 27, 3–56 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Nishizawa, J. & Suto, K. Semiconductor Raman laser. J. Appl. Phys. 51, 2429–2431 (1980)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Grabtchikov, A. S. et al. All solid-state diode-pumped Raman laser with self-frequency conversion. Appl. Phys. Lett. 75, 3742–3744 (1999)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Liu, H. C. et al. Intersubband Raman laser. Appl. Phys. Lett. 78, 3580–3582 (2001)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Liu, H. C. et al. Coupled electron-phonon modes in optically pumped resonant intersubband lasers. Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 077402 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Spillane, S. M., Kippenberg, T. J. & Vahala, L. J. Ultralow-threshold Raman laser using a spherical dielectric microcavity. Nature 415, 621–623 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Capasso, F., Sirtorí, C. & Cho, A. Y. Coupled quantum well semiconductors with giant electric field tunable nonlinear optical properties in the infrared. IEEE J. Quant. Electron. 30, 1313–1326 (1994)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Rosencher, E. et al. Quantum engineering of optical nonlinearities. Science 271, 168–173 (1996)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Owschimikow, N. et al. Resonant second-order nonlinear optical processes in quantum cascade lasers. Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 043902 (2003)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  12. Gmachl, C. et al. Optimized second-harmonic generation in quantum cascade lasers. IEEE J. Quant. Electron. 39, 1345–1355 (2003)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Bengloan, J.-Y. et al. Intracavity sum-frequency generation in GaAs quantum cascade lasers. Appl. Phys. Lett. 84, 2019–2021 (2004)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  14. Khurgin, J. B., Sun, G., Friedman, L. R. & Soref, R. A. Comparative analysis of optically pumped intersubband lasers and intersubband Raman oscillators. J. Appl. Phys. 78, 7398–7400 (1995)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  15. Faist, J., Hofstetter, D., Beck, M. & Aellen, T. Bound-to-continuum and two-phonon resonance, quantum-cascade lasers for high duty cycle, high-temperature operation. IEEE J. Quant. Electron. 38, 533–546 (2002)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Capasso, F. et al. New frontiers in quantum cascade lasers and applications. IEEE J. Select. Topics Quant. Electron. 6, 931–947 (2000)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Belyanin, A. A., Bentley, C., Capasso, F., Kocharovskaya, O. & Scully, M. O. Inversionless lasing with self-generated driving field. Phys. Rev. A 64, 013814 (2001)

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  18. Kocharovskaya, O., Rostovtsev, Yu. V. & Imamoglu, A. Inversionless amplification in the three-level atoms with and without a hidden inversion in reservoir. Phys. Rev. A 58, 649–654 (1998)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Gmachl, C. et al. Dependence of the device performance on the number of stages in quantum-cascade lasers. IEEE J. Select. Topics Quant. Electron. 5, 808–816 (1999)

    Article  ADS  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Helm, M. in Intersubband Transitions in Quantum Wells: Physics and Applications I (eds Liu, H. C. & Capasso, F.) 1–91 (Academic, London, 2000)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank C. Gmachl for many discussions. A.B. acknowledges support from the TAMU TITF Initiative.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02138, USA

    Mariano Troccoli, Federico Capasso & Ertugrul Cubukcu

  2. Department of Physics, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, 77843, USA

    Alexey Belyanin

  3. Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, New Jersey, 07974, USA

    Deborah L. Sivco & Alfred Y. Cho

Authors
  1. Mariano Troccoli
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alexey Belyanin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Federico Capasso
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Ertugrul Cubukcu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Deborah L. Sivco
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Alfred Y. Cho
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mariano Troccoli or Alexey Belyanin.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Troccoli, M., Belyanin, A., Capasso, F. et al. Raman injection laser. Nature 433, 845–848 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03330

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03330

This article is cited by

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing