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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Nonclassical amplitude-squeezed light generated by semiconductor quantum well lasers

Daniel C. Kilper, Michael J. Freeman, Duncan G. Steel, Richard R. Craig, Donald R. Scifres

Published Apr 26, 1995• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Amplitude-squeezed light has been generated by semiconductor quantum well lasers in numerous optical configurations, at both room and cryogenic temperatures. Various intensity noise sources associated with nonideal laser operation, in particular mode partition and polarization-dependent noise, can introduce intensity fluctuations that limit or remove amplitude squeezing. We discuss amplitude noise reduction in low-temperature free-running and injection-locking laser configurations and room-temperature injection locking and external-cavity laser configurations. Drive-current modulation with a nonclassical SNR improvement is achieved with an injection-locked laser.

DOI
10.1117/12.208246

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In this dissertation measurements are presented that extend our understanding of the important noise processes involved in the semiconductor laser generation of photon-number squeezed light. Strong sub-shot noise correlations between photon-number fluctuations on orthogonal polarization axes are observed in the output of a low temperature injection-locked quantum-well laser. Such polarization dependent effects are accounted for by intrinsic correlations generated in the laser gain medium and polarization mixing due to birefringence. Using polarization preserving balanced homodyne detection, up to 4.5 dB of photon-number squeezing is reported, which is within 95% of the expected maximum squeezing based on the device quantum efficiency. The work in this dissertation demonstrates the application of such nonclassical fields to practical measurements that achieve sub-shot noise sensitivity. Coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy with a photon-number squeezed probe field is used to measure the Urbach tail and exciton resonances in a GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well with sensitivity below the semiclassical shot-noise limit. Direct drive current modulation of an injection-locked room temperature laser results in a nonclassical amplitude modulated field with a signal to noise ratio that exceeds the maximum ratio permitted for a classical source under equivalent modulation conditions.

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The control of the quantum state of light has recently been studied extensively, aiming at the achievement of ultra-low noise below the shot noise limit. Several experiments showed that amplitude squeezing could be achieved in constant-current-driven semiconductor lasers. However, the generation of amplitude-squeezed light from distributed feedback semiconductor lasers (DFB) has been up to now considerably less successful than that from Fabry-Perot devices. Simulations indicate that DFB structures with high coupling coefficient length product kL are unlikely to be good sources of squeezed light, because of the evanescence of the optical fields along the grating [1]. They also show, that for low kL values the lowest achievable intensity noise depends on the structure of the laser diode and can be higher than expected from the laser quantum efficiency alone.

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Amplitude-squeezed light has been generated by semiconductor quantum well lasers in numerous optical configurations, at both room and cryogenic temperatures. Various intensity noise sources associated with nonideal laser operation, in particular mode partition and polarization-dependent noise, can introduce intensity fluctuations that limit or remove amplitude squeezing. We discuss amplitude noise reduction in low-temperature free-running and injection-locking laser configurations and room-temperature injection locking and external-cavity laser configurations. Drive-current modulation with a nonclassical SNR improvement is achieved with an injection-locked laser.
In this dissertation measurements are presented that extend our understanding of the important noise processes involved in the semiconductor laser generation of photon-number squeezed light. Strong sub-shot noise correlations between photon-number fluctuations on orthogonal polarization axes are observed in the output of a low temperature injection-locked quantum-well laser. Such polarization dependent effects are accounted for by intrinsic correlations generated in the laser gain medium and polarization mixing due to birefringence. Using polarization preserving balanced homodyne detection, up to 4.5 dB of photon-number squeezing is reported, which is within 95% of the expected maximum squeezing based on the device quantum efficiency. The work in this dissertation demonstrates the application of such nonclassical fields to practical measurements that achieve sub-shot noise sensitivity. Coherent nonlinear optical spectroscopy with a photon-number squeezed probe field is used to measure the Urbach tail and exciton resonances in a GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well with sensitivity below the semiclassical shot-noise limit. Direct drive current modulation of an injection-locked room temperature laser results in a nonclassical amplitude modulated field with a signal to noise ratio that exceeds the maximum ratio permitted for a classical source under equivalent modulation conditions.
The generation of light with amplitude-noise levels below the standard quantum limit (SQL) by constant-current operation of light-emitting and semiconductor laser diodes has been well established.1 Nearly all of this work, however, has been conducted with the light source cooled to cryogenic temperatures. At room temperature, the highest observed squeezing levels were 0.6 dB for light-emitting diodes and 0.2 dB for laser diodes.2 We presently report up to 1.8 dB of squeezing from a commercially available index-guided quantum-well laser (SDL-5410-C) operated at room temperature. Although cross-gain saturation can lead to amplitude squeezing of the total number of photons emitted by a multimode semiconductor laser in the limit of fast intraband scattering and the absence of wavelength-dependent loss,3 we found that it was necessary to suppress the >100 near-threshold longitudinal side modes of the laser to obtain squeezing at room temperature. This was accomplished either by using optical feedback from a grating in an external cavity configuration or by injection-locking the laser to a single-frequency laser. Both of these techniques allow the output wavelength of the laser to be named and thus the squeezing level as a function of wavelength to be studied.
The intensity-noise properties of an injection-locked semiconductor laser were studied experimentally. The constant-current-driven semiconductor laser producing the amplitude-squeezed state whose intensity noise was reduced below the standard quantum limit (SQL) by 0.72 dB was injection-locked by an external master laser. The measured intensity-noise level of the injection-locked semiconductor laser was 0.91 dB below the SQL. This experimental result indicates that a phase-coherent amplitude-squeezed state or squeezed vacuum state together with a reference local oscillator wave can be generated directly by semiconductor laser systems.
Amplitude-squeezed states are generated from a room-temperature semiconductor laser using a combination of pump suppression and dispersive optical feedback. The laser amplitude noise is found to be sensitive to extremely weak feedback levels, of the order of 10-8 of the output power. a reduction of the noise from 2% below the standard quantum limit (SQL) under free-running conditions to 19% below the SQL under optimal feedback conditions is obtained. A single mode theory is presented but is found to be inadequate in explaining the measured dependence of the noise reduction on the feedback power. A multimode theory including asymmetrical cross-mode nonlinear gain is proposed to explain this discrepancy.
The control of the quantum state of light has recently been studied extensively, aiming at the achievement of ultra-low noise below the shot noise limit. Several experiments showed that amplitude squeezing could be achieved in constant-current-driven semiconductor lasers. However, the generation of amplitude-squeezed light from distributed feedback semiconductor lasers (DFB) has been up to now considerably less successful than that from Fabry-Perot devices. Simulations indicate that DFB structures with high coupling coefficient length product kL are unlikely to be good sources of squeezed light, because of the evanescence of the optical fields along the grating [1]. They also show, that for low kL values the lowest achievable intensity noise depends on the structure of the laser diode and can be higher than expected from the laser quantum efficiency alone.