{"id":2770,"date":"2011-07-19T15:06:26","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T15:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/?p=2770"},"modified":"2011-07-19T15:06:26","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T15:06:26","slug":"cascaded-energy-transfer-for-efficient-broadband-pumping-of-high-quality-micro-lasers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/cascaded-energy-transfer-for-efficient-broadband-pumping-of-high-quality-micro-lasers\/","title":{"rendered":"Cascaded Energy Transfer for Efficient Broadband Pumping of High-quality Micro-lasers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Figure<\/a>

Figure 1: Illustration of ray tracing under (a) normal (spontaneous) and (b) lasing (stimulated) conditions within an LSC. (c) Typical laser transfer characteristic, showing the dramatic change in efficiency above the threshold.<\/p><\/div>\n

Many on-chip optical applications, including spectroscopy [1<\/a>] <\/sup>; sensing [2<\/a>] <\/sup> [3<\/a>] <\/sup>; nonlinear optics [4<\/a>] <\/sup> [5<\/a>] <\/sup> [6<\/a>] <\/sup>; and optical communications require high-finesse [7<\/a>] <\/sup> [8<\/a>] <\/sup>, high-quality factor (high-Q<\/em>) micro-lasers. Such lasers must be exceptionally transparent at their emission wavelength. But if high-Q<\/em> micro-lasers exhibit correspondingly weak absorption at the pump wavelengths, they are challenging to excite. Here we demonstrate micro-ring lasers that exhibit Q<\/em> >\u00a05.2\u00a0\u00d7\u00a0106<\/sup> and a finesse of > 1.8\u00a0\u00d7\u00a0104<\/sup> with a direct-illumination, non-resonant pump.\u00a0 The micro-rings are coated with a combination of three organic dyes. This cascaded combination of near and ultimately far field energy transfer reduces material-losses by a factor of more than 104<\/sup>, transforming incoherent light to coherent light with high quantum-efficiency. The operating principle established here is general and can enable fully integrated on-chip, high-finesse micro-lasers without the complications of coupled pump and emitter resonators [9<\/a>] <\/sup>.<\/p>\n

We are now working on lasing luminance solar concentrators (LSC) or solar powered lasers based on the cascaded energy concept. Above threshold, all the fundamental properties of an LSC improve. Specifically, (i) the brightness of the lasing LSC can be orders of magnitude larger than conventional solar concentrators; (ii) stimulated emission enhances the photoluminescent efficiency; (iii) it increases the trapping efficiency of the LSC; (iv) and stimulated emission decreases self-absorption. A solar powered laser also, in essence, converts a portion of the incoherent solar spectrum into a coherent source. This conversion enables the solar powered laser light to be frequency converted in nonlinear crystals, allowing harvesting of more of the solar spectrum via efficient upconversion and downconversion for high efficiency photovoltaics. Figure 1 shows ray tracing of a below- and an above-threshold LSC.<\/p>\n<\/div>

  1. C. Y. Chao, W. Fung, and L. J. Guo, \u201cPolymer microring resonators for biochemical sensing applications,\u201d IEEE J. of Sel. Top. Quantum Electron<\/em>, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 134-142, Jan. 2006. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  2. <\/p>\n

    [1]\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 F. Vollmer, D. Braun, A. Libchaber, M. Khoshsima, I. Teraoka, and S. Arnold, \u201cProtein detection by optical shift of a resonant microcavity,\u201d Applied Physics Letters<\/em>, vol. 80, no. 21, \u00a0pp. 4057-4059, April 2002. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>

  3. A. Serpenguzel, S. Arnold, and G. Griffel, \u201cExcitation of resonances of microspheres on an optical fiber,\u201d Opt. Lett.<\/em>, vol. 20, no. 7, pp. 654-656, Apr. 1995 [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  4. R. K. Chang, and A. J. Campillo, Optical Processes in Microcavities<\/em>. Singapore: World Scientific, 1996. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  5. F. Treussart, V. S. Ilchenko, J. F. Roch, J. Hare, V. Lefevre-Seguin, J. M. Raimond, and S. Haroche, \u201cEvidence of intrinsic Kerr bistability of high-Q microsphere resonators in superfluid helium,\u201d\u00a0 Eur. Phys. J. D.<\/em>, vol. 1, pp. 235-238, Jan. 1998. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  6. S. M. Spillane, T. J. Kippenberg, and K. J. Vahala, \u201cUltra-low threshold Raman laser using a spherical dielectric microcavity,\u201d\u00a0 Nature<\/em>, vol. 415, pp. 621-623, Feb. 2002. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  7. B. E. Little, S. T. Chu, P. P. Absil, J. V. Hryniewicz, F. G. Johnson, F. Seiferth, D. Gill, V. Van, O. King, and M. Trakalo, \u201cVery high-order microring resonator filters for WDM applications,\u201d \u00a0IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett.<\/em>, vol. 16, no. 10, pp. 2263-2265, Oct. 2004. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  8. M. Ferrera, L. Razzari, D. Duchesne, R. Morandotti, Z. Yang, M. Liscidini, J. E. Sipe, S. Chu, B. Little, and D. J. Moss, \u201cLow power continuous-wave nonlinear optics in doped silica glass integrated waveguide structures,\u201d Nature Photonics<\/em>, vol. 2, pp. 737-740, Nov. 2008. [↩<\/a>]<\/li>
  9. Rotschild, C., Tomes, M., Mendoza, H., Andrew, T. L., Swager, T. M., Carmon, T. and Baldo, M. A., \u201cCascaded Energy Transfer for Efficient Broad-Band Pumping of High-Quality, Micro-Lasers,\u201d Advanced Materials<\/em>, vol. 23, 2011 [↩<\/a>]<\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Many on-chip optical applications, including spectroscopy [1] ; sensing [2] [3] ; nonlinear optics [4] [5] [6] ; and optical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,5532],"tags":[4122,40,6102],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3991,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions\/3991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtlsites.mit.edu\/annual_reports\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}