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Do Nanolasers Benefit From a High $\beta$-Factor?

Frederik Lohof, Roy Barzel, P. Gärtner, Christopher Gies

Published Sep 24, 2018• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The realization of high-$\beta$ lasers is one of the prime applications of cavity-QED promising ultra-low thresholds, integrability and reduced power consumption in the field of \textit{green photonics}. In such nanolasers spontaneous emission can play a central role even above the threshold. By going beyond rate-equation approaches, we revisit the definition of a laser threshold in terms of the input-output characteristics and the degree of coherence of the emission. We demonstrate that there are new regimes of cavity-QED lasing, realized e.g. in high-$Q$ nanolasers with extended gain material, for which the two can differ significantly such that coherence is reached at much higher pump powers than required to observe the thresholdlike intensity jump. Against the common perception, such devices do not benefit from high-$\beta$ factors in terms of power reduction, as a significant amount of stimulated emission is required to quieten the spontaneous emission noise.

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Do Nanolasers Benefit From a High β\betaβ-Factor?
The realization of high-β\betaβ lasers is one of the prime applications of cavity-QED promising ultra-low thresholds, integrability and reduced power consumption in the field of \textit{green photonics}. In such nanolasers spontaneous emission can play a central role even above the threshold. By going beyond rate-equation approaches, we revisit the definition of a laser threshold in terms of the input-output characteristics and the degree of coherence of the emission. We demonstrate that there are new regimes of cavity-QED lasing, realized e.g. in high-QQQ nanolasers with extended gain material, for which the two can differ significantly such that coherence is reached at much higher pump powers than required to observe the thresholdlike intensity jump. Against the common perception, such devices do not benefit from high-β\betaβ factors in terms of power reduction, as a significant amount of stimulated emission is required to quieten the spontaneous emission noise.
The development and physical understanding of high-beta nanolasers operating in regime of cavity-quantum-electrodynamics (cQED) is a highly interdisciplinary field of research, involving important aspects of nanotechnology, quantum optics, and semiconductor physics. Of particular interest is the quantum limit of operation, in which a few or even a single emitter act as gain material. The regime of strong light-matter coupling is typically associated with weak excitation. With current realizations of cQED systems, strong coupling may persevere even at elevated excitation levels sufficient to cross the threshold to lasing. In the presence of stimulated emission, the vacuum-Rabi doublet in the emission spectrum is modified and the established criterion for strong coupling no longer applies. Based on an analytic approach, we provide a generalized criterion for strong coupling and the corresponding emission spectrum that includes the influence of higher Jaynes-Cummings states. The applicability is demonstrated in a theory-experiment comparison of a state-of-the-art few-emitter quantum-dot (QD)–micropillar laser as a particular realization of the driven dissipative Jaynes-Cummings model [1]. Furthermore, we address the question if and for which parameters true single-emitter lasing can be achieved. By using a master-equation approach for up to 8 QDs coupled to the mode, we provide evidence for the coexistence of strong coupling and lasing in our system in the presence of background emitter contributions by identifying signatures in the mean-photon number, the photon-autocorrelation function, and the emission linewidth. [1] C. Gies et al., accepted for publication in PRA, arxiv:1606.05591
In a recent Letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 063902 (2021)], M. A. Carroll et al. derived a model to analytically determine regimes of thermal, collective anti-bunching, and laser emission for emitters in a cavity. According to their model, nanolasers exhibit a distinct threshold at which the coherent laser field emerges from a bifurcation at a finite pump rate. The amplitude of this coherent field increases with a further increase in the pump rate. Such a behavior contrasts the usual view of the transition to lasing in single-mode high-β\betaβ nanolasers, according to which strong spontaneous emission into the lasing mode results in a smooth transformation from the thermal state to the coherent state as the pump rate increases. Here, we demonstrate that the authors have ignored important terms in the equations of their model, which caused the bifurcation and the ideally monochromatic field to emerge at a finite pump rate.
We detail the derivation of nanolaser models that include coherent and incoherent variables and predict the existence of a laser threshold, irrespective of cavity size and emitter number, for both single- and multielectron systems. The growth in photon number in the lasing mode is driven by an increase in correlation between absorption and emission processes, leading to the onset of self-sustained stimulated emission (laser threshold), followed in turn by a correlation decrease and ending with the dominance of coherent emission. The first-order coherence g(1){g}^{(1)}g(1) steadily increases, as the pump grows towards the laser threshold value, and reaches unity at or beyond threshold. The transition toward coherent emission becomes increasingly sharp as the numbers of emitters and coupled electromagnetic cavity modes increase, continuously connecting, in the thermodynamic limit, the physics of nano- and macroscopic lasers at threshold. Our predictions are in remarkable agreement with experiments whose first-order coherence measurements have so far been explained only phenomenologically. A consistent evaluation of different threshold indicators provides a tool for a correct interpretation of experimental measurements at the onset of laser action.
We develop a birth-death model for a cavity QED laser and analyze the dependence of the lasing threshold on the fraction, \ensuremath{\beta}, of spontaneous emission directed into the laser mode. We define threshold in terms of the Fano factor for the intracavity phonon number. We emphasize the role of \ensuremath{\beta} as a parameter characterizing the ``system size'' and show that the concept of laser threshold is well-defined in the ``thermodynamic'' limit, ${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\beta}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}. An ideal cavity-QED laser operates far outside this limit and therefore, in contrast to a conventional laser, is not a threshold device. We present numerical results showing how this difference affects the noise properties of the device.
The random nature of spontaneous emission leads to unavoidable fluctuations in a laser's output. This is often included through random Langevin forces in laser rate equations, but this approach falls short for nanolasers. In this paper, we show that the laser quantum noise can be quantitatively computed for a very broad class of lasers by starting from simple and intuitive rate equations and merely assuming that the number of photons and excited electrons only takes discrete values. While the approach has seen previous success, we here derive it rigorously from an open quantum system master equation, whereas it was previously introduced only on phenomenological grounds. We further show that in the many-photon limit, the model simplifies to Langevin equations. We perform an extensive comparison of different approaches for computing quantum noise in lasers, identifying the best approach for different system sizes, ranging from nanolasers to macroscopic lasers, and different levels of excitation, i.e., cavity photon number. In particular, we show that below the laser threshold, stochastic fluctuations in the numerical solution to the Langevin equations can drive populations to unphysical negative values, requiring the introduction of population bounds, which in turn skew the noise statistics, leading to inaccuracies. The Laser Markov Chain model, on the other hand, is accurate for all pump values and laser sizes when collective emitter effects are excluded.