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

Hole burning and population pulsations in semiconductor laser media (Invited Paper)

M. Sargent

Published Jul 1, 1992• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Interactions of sidemodes in a semiconductor gain medium in the presence of an oscillating mode are studied both for beat frequencies comparable to interband relaxation rates as well as those comparable to intraband relaxation rates. The former applies to the complete many-body theory, provided the strong mode Rabi frequency is small compared to the intraband relaxation rates. Population pulsations play an important role in both cases, with spectral hole burning playing an equally important role for the large beat frequency case.

DOI
10.1117/12.60483

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Interactions of sidemodes in a semiconductor gain medium in the presence of an oscillating mode are studied both for beat frequencies comparable to interband relaxation rates as well as those comparable to intraband relaxation rates. The former applies to the complete many-body theory, provided the strong mode Rabi frequency is small compared to the intraband relaxation rates. Population pulsations play an important role in both cases, with spectral hole burning playing an equally important role for the large beat frequency case.
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There have recently been several studies of the performance of laser frequency stabilization using spectral holes in solids, instead of an external cavity, as a frequency reference. Here an analytical theory for Pound-Drever-Hall laser frequency stabilization using spectral hole-burning is developed. The interaction between the atomic medium and the phase modulated light is described using a linearized model of the Maxwell-Bloch equations. The interplay between the carrier and modulation sidebands reveals significant differences from the case of locking to a cavity. These include a different optimum modulation index, an optimum sample absorption, and the possibility to lock the laser in an inherent linear frequency drift mode. Spectral holes in solids can be permanent or transient. For the materials normally used, the dynamics and time scales of transient holes often depend on population relaxation processes between ground state hyperfine levels. These relaxation rates can be very different for different solid state materials. We demonstrate, using radio-frequency pumping, that the hyperfine population dynamics may be controlled and tailored to give optimum frequency stabilization performance. In this way also materials with initially non-optimum performance can be used for stabilization. The theoretical predictions regarding the inherent linear frequency drift is compared to experimental data from a dye laser stabilized to a spectral hole in a Pr(3+)3+:Y(2)SiO(5) crystal.
In a recent paper1, a quantum theory of multiwave interactions with a two-level medium is presented. In this paper we apply this theory to sidemode instabilities pertinent to cavity con figurations in optical bistability and ring lasers. We assume the cavity to oscillate on a single mode, and we evaluate the gain and spontaneous emission at other frequencies. Because of the saturating presence of the strong, laser mode, two symmetrically situated sidemodes can grow together, inducing populations pulsations that influence the other sidemode. The instability must therefore be treated as a double sidemode problem.
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The availability of femtosecond pulses in the optical-frequency regime allows the study of coherent effects in the interaction between semiconductors and light. Because the properties of the exciting pulses become important ingredients in spectroscopy, the theoretical analysis must treat the complete time dependence of the system. For this purpose we use the semiconductor Bloch equations (SBE),1-3 which are the coupled equations of motion for the interband polarization and the electron and hole populations for an interacting electron-hole system in the random-phase approximation. The equations describe the electron-hole Coulomb attraction leading to excitonic features; they contain phasespace filling and band-gap renormalization effects, as well as the dipole interaction with the applied light field.