Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Physical Review Letters

Acceleration of coherent transfer of energy by stimulated emission and absorption

Curtis W. Lowry, F. Brown de Colstoun, A. E. Paul, G. Khitrova, H. M. Gibbs, Jeffrey W. Grantham, R. Jin, Deepak Boggavarapu, S. W. Koch, M. Sargent, Tom M. Brennan, B. E. Hammons

Published Sep 6, 1993• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Coherent transfer of energy (CTE) gives rise to a new peak and dip in the probe gain spectrum that move proportionally with the intracavity injected power showing that stimulated emission and absorption significantly speed up the semiconductor response. Gain modification is seen in two nondegenerate, cross-polarized modes of a microcavity laser when light is injected into only one mode, giving strong evidence for the CTE origin of the gain asymmetry.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.71.1534

Related papers

Power broadening of coherent energy transfer in semiconductor gain media

Curtis W. Lowry, G. Khitrova, F. Brown de Colstoun +9 more

Coherent energy transfer gives rise to a new peak and dip in the probe gain spectrum that move proportionally with the intracavity injected power, showing that stimulated emission and absorption significantly speed up the semiconductor response.

Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE•Aug 10, 1994•0 citations

Pump depletion through coherent energy transfer in semiconductors

Curtis W. Lowry, Tom M. Brennan, B. Gene Hammons

Experimental and theoretical study of multiwave mixing in semiconductors shows that a pump beam may be depleted through coherent energy transfer by a probe with either positive or negative pump/probe detuning. The gain modification is a sum of symmetric and antisymmetric parts associated with on-resonant and off-resonant effects, respectively. The intracavity probe power required for a given pump depletion is linearly dependent on detuning. Laser mode depletion causes mode switching that gives polarization and frequency conversion with high signal gain and high contrast.

Optics Letters•Jan 15, 1995•0 citations

Asymmetric Gain in a Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser

F. Brown de Colstoun, Curtis W. Lowry, G. Khitrova +5 more

The gain spectrum of a semiconductor can be locally modified by a strong nearly resonant laser field through population pulsations.1,2 Rayleigh-gain, an asymmetric modification of the gain profile of an atom, has been investigated previously.3,4 Laser diode longitudinal modes have been used to show gain asymmetry1,5, but the mode spacing (75 GHz5) has limited the observation to the periphery of the curve. Mapping the more closely spaced gain peak and dip is important because they can significantly modify the output spectrum of a laser (creating new lasing lines at the new gain peak and extinguishing the original lasing with the gain dip). Pump/probe experiments in traveling wave amplifiers (TWA)6 have shown the gain to be asymmetric, but the gain peak and dip were broadened because the injected signal grew in power (from ≃ 87 μW to 4.4mW6) during propagation. Using a high Q vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) as the gain medium we have intracavity powers at the injected frequency that do not grow with propagation and are much higher than the TWA experiments (up to 75 mW in a 5 μm spot), pushing the gain peak as far as 36.5 GHz from the injected frequency. Rather than using longitudinal modes to probe discretely the gain asymmetry, when the gain extrema are within 10 GHz of the injected frequency we directly observe localized dips and peaks in the continuous ouput spectrum of the VCSEL. As increased injected power pushes the gain extrema out further, we observe modification of the line shape and pushing of the lasing. We find that the detuning of the gain extrema from the injected frequency increases linearly with the intracavity intensity at the injected frequency (in contrast with relaxation oscillations and other effects that scale with the field level). Understanding local modifications of the cw gain profile is of crucial importance to elucidate instabilities in semiconductors lasers.

Quantum Optoelectronics•Jan 1, 1993•0 citations

Acceleration of Coherent Transfer of Energy by Stimulated Emission and Absorption

H. M. Gibbs, G. Khitrova, Curtis W. Lowry +1 more

Get PDF Email Share Share with Facebook Tweet This Post on reddit Share with LinkedIn Add to CiteULike Add to Mendeley Add to BibSonomy Get Citation Copy Citation Text H. M. Gibbs, G. Khitrova, C. W. Lowry, and S. W. Koch, "Acceleration of Coherent Transfer of Energy by Stimulated Emission and Absorption," Optics & Photonics News 5(12), 14-15 (1994) Export Citation BibTex Endnote (RIS) HTML Plain Text Citation alert Save article

Optics and Photonics News•Dec 1, 1994•2 citations

Optical Gain and Lasers

Gabriel Laufer

Introduction Previous discussions (see Section 10.4) suggested that stimulated emission can be used to generate optical gain, that is, to amplify radiation. The reader certainly has experience in the amplification of electronic signal. For example, radio receivers capture faint radio waves and turn them into a signal that is powerful enough to drive large speakers. This electronic amplification increases the amplitude of the signal while faithfully preserving its acoustic frequencies and modulation characteristics. Similarly, optical amplification is expected to increase the amplitude of an optical signal while preserving its frequency, its modulation characteristics, and its coherence. The latter requirement is of particular significance for optical radiation, where the coherence of naturally occurring radiation rarely exceeds one micrometer. Lasers are the primary source for coherent radiation. They depend on stimulated emission for amplification and for the generation of coherent radiation (the word laser is the acronym of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). For amplification, an atomic system that is part of the laser medium must be prepared with a sufficiently large number of particles in the excited state. (The term atomic system is used here to describe all microscopic systems including molecules and free electrons.) Radiation passing through that excited medium encounters multiple events of stimulated emission, each event contributing one photon that is added coherently to the propagating beam. When the number of events of stimulated emission exceed all losses by absorption or scattering, the incident radiation is amplified.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Jul 13, 1996•0 citations

Self-consistent theory of optical gain with and without inversion in semiconductor quantum wells

Ansheng Liu

In a self-consistent field formalism we investigated the weak-probe optical intersubband response of a three-subband semiconductor quantum well pumped by a strong coherent laser beam. We showed that, when the pumping photon energy is somewhat above the energy separation between the two lowest subbands, a combination of hole-burning effects and coherent pump–probe wave interactions can lead to both optical gain without population inversion and an Autler–Townes-like doublet in the probe optical spectrum. These two absorption peaks, whose positions are blueshifted as the pump intensity is increased, are due to the two-photon absorption process and light-induced intersubband transitions between the two upper states. It is also demonstrated that, in a stepwise two-photon pumping scheme, the optical gain with population inversion can also occur in the quantum-well system when a modestly strong pump field is present.

Journal of the Optical Society of America B•Jun 1, 1998•7 citations
Coherent transfer of energy (CTE) gives rise to a new peak and dip in the probe gain spectrum that move proportionally with the intracavity injected power showing that stimulated emission and absorption significantly speed up the semiconductor response. Gain modification is seen in two nondegenerate, cross-polarized modes of a microcavity laser when light is injected into only one mode, giving strong evidence for the CTE origin of the gain asymmetry.
Experimental and theoretical study of multiwave mixing in semiconductors shows that a pump beam may be depleted through coherent energy transfer by a probe with either positive or negative pump/probe detuning. The gain modification is a sum of symmetric and antisymmetric parts associated with on-resonant and off-resonant effects, respectively. The intracavity probe power required for a given pump depletion is linearly dependent on detuning. Laser mode depletion causes mode switching that gives polarization and frequency conversion with high signal gain and high contrast.
The gain spectrum of a semiconductor can be locally modified by a strong nearly resonant laser field through population pulsations.1,2 Rayleigh-gain, an asymmetric modification of the gain profile of an atom, has been investigated previously.3,4 Laser diode longitudinal modes have been used to show gain asymmetry1,5, but the mode spacing (75 GHz5) has limited the observation to the periphery of the curve. Mapping the more closely spaced gain peak and dip is important because they can significantly modify the output spectrum of a laser (creating new lasing lines at the new gain peak and extinguishing the original lasing with the gain dip). Pump/probe experiments in traveling wave amplifiers (TWA)6 have shown the gain to be asymmetric, but the gain peak and dip were broadened because the injected signal grew in power (from ≃ 87 μW to 4.4mW6) during propagation. Using a high Q vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) as the gain medium we have intracavity powers at the injected frequency that do not grow with propagation and are much higher than the TWA experiments (up to 75 mW in a 5 μm spot), pushing the gain peak as far as 36.5 GHz from the injected frequency. Rather than using longitudinal modes to probe discretely the gain asymmetry, when the gain extrema are within 10 GHz of the injected frequency we directly observe localized dips and peaks in the continuous ouput spectrum of the VCSEL. As increased injected power pushes the gain extrema out further, we observe modification of the line shape and pushing of the lasing. We find that the detuning of the gain extrema from the injected frequency increases linearly with the intracavity intensity at the injected frequency (in contrast with relaxation oscillations and other effects that scale with the field level). Understanding local modifications of the cw gain profile is of crucial importance to elucidate instabilities in semiconductors lasers.
Introduction Previous discussions (see Section 10.4) suggested that stimulated emission can be used to generate optical gain, that is, to amplify radiation. The reader certainly has experience in the amplification of electronic signal. For example, radio receivers capture faint radio waves and turn them into a signal that is powerful enough to drive large speakers. This electronic amplification increases the amplitude of the signal while faithfully preserving its acoustic frequencies and modulation characteristics. Similarly, optical amplification is expected to increase the amplitude of an optical signal while preserving its frequency, its modulation characteristics, and its coherence. The latter requirement is of particular significance for optical radiation, where the coherence of naturally occurring radiation rarely exceeds one micrometer. Lasers are the primary source for coherent radiation. They depend on stimulated emission for amplification and for the generation of coherent radiation (the word laser is the acronym of Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). For amplification, an atomic system that is part of the laser medium must be prepared with a sufficiently large number of particles in the excited state. (The term atomic system is used here to describe all microscopic systems including molecules and free electrons.) Radiation passing through that excited medium encounters multiple events of stimulated emission, each event contributing one photon that is added coherently to the propagating beam. When the number of events of stimulated emission exceed all losses by absorption or scattering, the incident radiation is amplified.
In a self-consistent field formalism we investigated the weak-probe optical intersubband response of a three-subband semiconductor quantum well pumped by a strong coherent laser beam. We showed that, when the pumping photon energy is somewhat above the energy separation between the two lowest subbands, a combination of hole-burning effects and coherent pump–probe wave interactions can lead to both optical gain without population inversion and an Autler–Townes-like doublet in the probe optical spectrum. These two absorption peaks, whose positions are blueshifted as the pump intensity is increased, are due to the two-photon absorption process and light-induced intersubband transitions between the two upper states. It is also demonstrated that, in a stepwise two-photon pumping scheme, the optical gain with population inversion can also occur in the quantum-well system when a modestly strong pump field is present.