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Physical Review Letters

Measurement of Optical Two-Photon Gain in Electrically Pumped AlGaAs at Room Temperature

Amir Nevet, Alex Hayat, Meir Orenstein

Published May 20, 2010• 28 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally two-photon gain in semiconductor structures, shown previously only in dilute atomic systems. Two-photon gain is directly observed and characterized in electrically pumped room-temperature semiconductor devices, in good agreement with theory. The semiconductor structure was designed to enhance the two-photon interaction and reduce parasitic effects. The nonlinear two-photon amplification is studied directly by examining the current dependence of the optical intensity growth, and indirectly by monitoring the reduction in one-photon emission due to two-photon transitions above transparency.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.104.207404

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We demonstrate experimentally two-photon gain in semiconductor structures, shown previously only in dilute atomic systems. Two-photon gain is directly observed and characterized in electrically pumped room-temperature semiconductor devices, in good agreement with theory. The semiconductor structure was designed to enhance the two-photon interaction and reduce parasitic effects. The nonlinear two-photon amplification is studied directly by examining the current dependence of the optical intensity growth, and indirectly by monitoring the reduction in one-photon emission due to two-photon transitions above transparency.
Two-photon emission (TPE) in semiconductors was recently observed, enabling possible realizations of efficient room temperature electrically-driven heralded single-photon sources, entanglement sources, two-photon amplifiers and lasers allowing ultra-short optical pulse generation based on the nonlinearity and the wide bandwidth of two-photon gain. Two-photon lasers (TPL) based on stimulated TPE have unique microscopic quantum properties such as squeezed state operation as well as macroscopic ones including threshold dependence on cavity photon number and bi-stability, while pushing further the modulation speed limit. Semiconductor high charge carrier concentrations, mature fabrication technology and the possibility for electrical control offer many advantages for the implementation of TPLs and two-photon amplifiers. The first step towards realizing of semiconductor two-photon amplifiers or TPLs is to achieve two-photon transparency (TPT) condition, which is reported here for the first time in semiconductors (or any solid state medium).
We study a new effect of Cooper-pair-based two-photon gain in semiconductor-superconductor structures, showing broadband enhancement of ultrafast two-photon amplification. We further show that with the superconducting enhancement, at moderately high seed intensities, the two-photon gain contribution approaches that of the one-photon gain. A full quantum-optical model of singly- and fully-stimulated two-photon emission is developed. Our results provide new insights on nonlinear light–matter interaction in the superconducting state, including the possibility of coherent control in two-photon semiconductor-superconductor devices. The theoretically-demonstrated effects can have important implications in optoelectronics and in coherent-control applications.
We propose a compact high-intensity room-temperature source of entangled photons based on the efficient second-order process of two-photon spontaneous emission from electrically pumped semiconductor quantum wells in a photonic microcavity. Two-photon emission rate in room-temperature semiconductor devices is determined solely by the carrier density, regardless of the residual one-photon emission. The microcavity selects two-photon emission for a specific signal and idler wavelengths and at a preferred direction without modifying the overall rate. Pair-generation rate in GaAs∕AlGaAs\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}∕\mathrm{Al}\mathrm{Ga}\mathrm{As}GaAs∕AlGaAs quantum well structure is estimated using a 14-band model to be 3 orders of magnitude higher than for traditional broadband parametric down-conversion sources.
We observe 30% two-photon optical amplification of a probe laser-field propagating through a laser-pumped potassium vapor. This amplification is spectrally isolated and substantially larger than that of previously reported continuous-wave two-photon amplifiers. The combination of large amplification and spectral isolation of the two-photon gain feature will greatly facilitate precise studies of the photon statistics of this highly nonlinear quantum amplifier and the development and characterization of a two-photon laser based on this gain medium. We also observe spectrally-distinct three-photon amplification $(\ensuremath{\sim}5$%) in the same system under different experimental conditions. We present a simple model of the interaction that gives qualitative agreement with our observations and explains the dependence of the two-photon gain on the various system parameters. This model predicts that the size of the two-photon gain is quite sensitive to an interference between two different quantum pathways.