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Applied Physics Letters

Ultraslow light (<200m∕s) propagation in a semiconductor nanostructure

Phedon Palinginis, Shanna Crankshaw, Forrest G. Sedgwick, Eui‐Tae Kim, Michael Moewe, Connie J. Chang-Hasnain, Hailin Wang, S. L. Chuang

Published Oct 14, 2005• 56 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report time-domain measurements of ultraslow light propagation in a semiconductor quantum-well structure using coherent population oscillation. Delays greater than 1 ns are achieved for an amplitude-modulated optical beam propagating through a 195-nm-long active region, corresponding to group velocities less than 200m∕s. Delays can be easily varied by adjusting the intensity of the control laser. The bandwidth is suitable to delay sub-GHz modulated optical signals.

DOI
10.1063/1.2112197

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We report time-domain measurements of ultraslow light propagation in a semiconductor quantum-well structure using coherent population oscillation. Delays greater than 1 ns are achieved for an amplitude-modulated optical beam propagating through a 195-nm-long active region, corresponding to group velocities less than 200m∕s. Delays can be easily varied by adjusting the intensity of the control laser. The bandwidth is suitable to delay sub-GHz modulated optical signals.
We present a theoretical study of the slow and fast light propagation in semiconductor optical amplifiers based on coherent population oscillations. By modulating the injection current to force the population oscillations we can modify the delay or advancement of light signals. Specifically, it is shown that the relative phase of the optical signal to the bias current modulations can be used as a knob for changing light propagation from delay to advancement. In addition, we analyze the effect of the modulation current for slow light in vertical cavity surface emission lasers (VCSELs) by taking into account the cavity effects. It is shown that the change of the depth of the modulation allows to tune the structural resonance, which in turn produces an enhancement of the delay.
Tunable delays in semiconductor optical amplifiers are achieved via four wave mixing between a strong pump beam and a modulated probe beam. The delay of the probe beam can be controlled both electrically, by changing the SOA bias, and optically, by varying the pump power or the pump-probe detuning. For sinusoidal modulated signal at 0.5 GHz, a tunable delay of 1.6 ns is achieved. This corresponds to a RF phase change of 1.6 pi. For 1.3 ns optical pulses propagating through the SOA a delay of 0.59 ns is achieved corresponding to a delay-bandwidth product exceeding 0.45. For both the cases, slow light and superluminal light are observed as the pump-probe detuning is varied.
We experimentally demonstrate slow-down of light by a factor of three in a 100 microm long semiconductor waveguide at room temperature and at a record-high frequency of 16.7 GHz. It is shown that the group velocity can be controlled all-optically as well as through an applied bias voltage. A semi-analytical model based on the effect of coherent population oscillations and taking into account propagation effects is derived and is shown to well account for the experimental results. It is shown that the carrier lifetime limits the maximum achievable delay. Based on the general model we analyze fundamental limitations in the application of light slowdown due to coherent population oscillations.
We propose a technique to obtain slow and fast light propagations based on coherent population oscillations forced by a modulated pump. This mechanism produces an enhancement of 1 order of magnitude of the delay or advancement of light signals. The relative phase between the pumps to the signal fields is used as a knob for changing light propagation from ultraslow group velocities to negative group velocities. The experimental realization of the phenomenon was carried out in an erbium-doped fiber amplifier at room temperature.
We demonstrate the formation of ultraslow dark optical solitons with a four-level scheme in an asymmetric semiconductor double quantum well (SDQW) structure based on intersubband transitions by using only a low-intensity pulsed laser radiation. With appropriate conditions we show numerically that the dark optical soliton can travel with a ultraslow group velocity V g /c ∼ – 10 −3 . Such a semiconductor system is much more practical than its atomic counterpart because of its flexible design and the controllable interference strength. This nonlinear optical process in the SDQW solid-state material may be used for the control technology of optical delay lines and optical buffers.