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High-speed ultracompact buried heterostructure photonic-crystal laser with 13 fJ of energy consumed per bit transmitted

Nature Photonics volume 4, pages 648–654 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

The ability to directly modulate a nanocavity laser with ultralow power consumption is essential for the realization of a CMOS-integrated, on-chip photonic network, as several thousand lasers must be integrated onto a single chip. Here, we show high-speed direct modulation (3-dB modulation bandwidth of 5.5 GHz) of an ultracompact InP/InGaAsP buried heterostructure photonic-crystal laser at room temperature by optical pumping. The required energy for transmitting one bit is estimated to be 13 fJ. We also achieve a threshold input power of 1.5 µW, which is the lowest observed value for room-temperature continuous-wave operation of any type of laser. The maximum single-mode fibre output power of 0.44 µW is the highest output power, to our knowledge, for photonic-crystal nanocavity lasers under room-temperature continuous-wave operation. Implementing a buried heterostructure leads to excellent device performance, reducing the active region temperature and effectively confining the carriers inside the cavity.

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Figure 1: Structure of the photonic-crystal nanocavity laser.
Figure 2: Fabricated of the BH photonic-crystal nanocavity laser.
Figure 3: Calculated active region temperature.
Figure 4: Measurement results for the fabricated laser.
Figure 5: Lasing spectrum and temperature dependence of the lasing wavelength.
Figure 6: Direct modulation of the fabricated laser.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank R. Urata, R. Takahashi and K. Kato for their technical support and discussions. We also thank T. Yamanaka and H. Saito for numerical simulation of the thermal relaxation and Y. Shouji for fabricating the device. Part of this work was supported by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NTT Photonics Laboratories, NTT Corporation, 3-1, Morinosato Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa, 243-0198, Japan

    Shinji Matsuo, Takaaki Kakitsuka, Toru Segawa, Tomonari Sato & Yoshihiro Kawaguchi

  2. NTT Basic Research Laboratories, NTT Corporation, 3-1, Morinosato Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa, 243-0198, Japan

    Akihiko Shinya, Kengo Nozaki & Masaya Notomi

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  1. Shinji Matsuo
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  2. Akihiko Shinya
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Contributions

S.M. and M.N. conceived the idea and supervised the project. A.S., T.K. and K.N. designed the devices. S.M., T.S., T.S. and Y.K. fabricated the devices. S.M. and A.S. performed the measurements. S.M. and M.N. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Shinji Matsuo.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Matsuo, S., Shinya, A., Kakitsuka, T. et al. High-speed ultracompact buried heterostructure photonic-crystal laser with 13 fJ of energy consumed per bit transmitted. Nature Photon 4, 648–654 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2010.177

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