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Enhancement of laser power-efficiency by control of spatial hole burning interactions

Nature Photonics volume 8, pages 871–875 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

The laser is an out-of-equilibrium nonlinear wave system where the interplay of the cavity geometry and nonlinear wave interactions mediated by the gain medium determines the self-organized oscillation frequencies and the associated spatial field patterns. In the steady state, a constant energy flux flows through the laser from the pump to the far field, with the ratio of the total output power to the input power determining the power-efficiency. Although nonlinear wave interactions have been modelled and well understood since the early days of laser theory, their impact on the power-efficiency of a laser system is poorly understood. Here, we show that spatial hole burning interactions generally decrease the power-efficiency. We then demonstrate how spatial hole burning interactions can be controlled by a spatially tailored pump profile, thereby boosting the power-efficiency, in some cases by orders of magnitude.

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Figure 1: Comparison of different optical pumping schemes and their corresponding emission patterns.
Figure 2: Characteristics of the optimally outcoupled mode.
Figure 3: Characteristics of a laser with nc = 3.3 + 10–4i, ωaR = 20.28 and γ⊥.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank N. Aung, H. Cao, Y. Dikmelik, D. Gerace, C. Gmachl, L. Le, A. D. Stone and I. Trofimov for discussions. This work is supported by MIRTHE NSF EEC-0540832 and DARPA grant no. N66001-11-1-4162.

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Author notes

  1. Li Ge

    Present address: Present address: Department of Engineering Science and Physics, College of Staten Island, CUNY, Staten Island, New York 10314, USA; The Graduate Center, CUNY, New York, NY 10016, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, 08544, New Jersey, USA

    Li Ge, Omer Malik & Hakan E. Türeci

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  1. Li Ge
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Contributions

L.G., O.M. and H.E.T. developed the theory and carried out the analytical calculations. L.G. and O.M. carried out the numerical calculations. H.E.T supervised the project. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Hakan E. Türeci.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Ge, L., Malik, O. & Türeci, H. Enhancement of laser power-efficiency by control of spatial hole burning interactions. Nature Photon 8, 871–875 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.244

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