ABSTRACT
Measurements of beam stability for mid-infrared (IR)-emitting quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are important for applications that require the beam to travel through air to remote targets, such as free-space communication links. We report beam-quality measurement results of narrow-ridge, 4.6 µm-emitting buried-heterostructure (BH) QCLs fabricated using ICP etching and HVPE regrowth. Beam-quality measurements under QCW operation exhibit M2 < 1.2 up to 1 W for â¼5 µm-wide ridges. 5 µm-wide devices display some small degree of centroid motion with increasing output power (< 0.125 mrad), which corresponds to a targeting error of â¼1.25 cm over a distance of 100 m.
ABSTRACT
Room temperature surface emission is realized on a large area (1.5 mm × 1.5 mm) photonic crystal quantum cascade laser (PhC-QCL) driven under pulsed mode, at the wavelength around 8.75 µm. By introducing in-plane asymmetry to the pillar shape and optimizing the current injection with a grid-like window contact, the maximum peak power of the PhC-QCL is up to 5 W. The surface emitting beam has a crossing shape with 10° divergence.
