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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Optical amplification enhancement in photonic crystals

Riccardo Sapienza, Marco Leonetti, Luis S. Froufe‐Pérez, Juan Francisco Galisteo‐López, Claudio Conti, Cefe López

Published May 1, 2011• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Improving and controlling the efficiency of a gain medium is one of the most challenging problems of laser research. By measuring the gain length in an opal-based photonic crystal (PhC) doped with laser dye, we demonstrate that optical amplification is more than twenty -fold enhanced along the Γ-K symmetry directions of the face centered-cubic photonic crystal. The samples under study are dye doped thin-film artificial opals, from which gain is extracted by using the stripe length technique: the spontaneous emitted photons, traveling in the direction of the pumped stripe, undergo an exponential amplification of the intensity as they pass through an area of population inversion. This can be quantified by the gain coefficient G which we demonstrate do depend from the propagation direction.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe.2011.5943227

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Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics Letters•Aug 1, 2008•1 citation
Improving and controlling the efficiency of a gain medium is one of the most challenging problems of laser research. By measuring the gain length in an opal-based photonic crystal (PhC) doped with laser dye, we demonstrate that optical amplification is more than twenty -fold enhanced along the Γ-K symmetry directions of the face centered-cubic photonic crystal. The samples under study are dye doped thin-film artificial opals, from which gain is extracted by using the stripe length technique: the spontaneous emitted photons, traveling in the direction of the pumped stripe, undergo an exponential amplification of the intensity as they pass through an area of population inversion. This can be quantified by the gain coefficient G which we demonstrate do depend from the propagation direction.
Improving and controlling the efficiency of a gain medium is one of the most challenging problems of laser research. By measuring the gain length in an opal-based photonic crystal doped with laser dye, we demonstrate that optical amplification is more than twenty-fold enhanced along the $\ensuremath{\Gamma}$-KKK symmetry directions of the face-centered-cubic photonic crystal. These results are theoretically explained by directional variations of the density of states, providing a quantitative connection between density of the states and light amplification.
We have derived an analytical expression for light amplification for stimulated emission in arbitrary two-dimensional photonic crystals (PHCs) using the response formula of the PHCs and the Bloch equations. This shows that the gain is proportional to the population inversion, and is inversely proportional to the group velocity and the relaxation coefficient of the phase, which indicates that the gain can be induced by population inversion and enhanced dramatically by small group velocity or anomalous group velocity.
Summary form only given: Amplification in rare-earth doped solid state planar optical structures has attracted a lot of interest in recent years due to the fact that the rare earth ions show sharp absorption and emission bands and relatively long luminescence lifetimes. In particular the erbium (Er) ion is very attractive because of its intra 4f-transition from the first excited state to the ground state around 1.53 mum (4I13/2-4I15/2). The main problem of the erbium doped waveguide amplifiers (EDWAs) is that high values of the Er3+concentration are required to reach high gain figures in a compact length, but in this way the concentration quenching effects become very considerable and detrimental to the optical gain, since they reduce the population in the first excited state. A good solution to overcome this dramatic drawback is to consider erbium doped photonic crystal amplifier (EDPCA). In fact the small group velocity of electromagnetic eigenmodes brings about the enhancement of stimulated emission if the photonic crystals are doped by active media as the rare earth ions E3+r or Yt3+. This phenomenon originates from the long interaction time between radiation field and the matter caused by the small group velocity near the edge of the photonic band gap. The efficient confinement of light is achievable not only by tuning the input signal at the band edge of the gap of the photonic crystal but it is also obtainable by introducing local defects inside photonic crystals. The density of electromagnetic states inside a cavity is significantly modified and the spontaneous emission of atoms in a cavity can be either enhanced or inhibited. Erbium doped silica-titania one-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities have been analyzed by solving the erbium rate equations and the Maxwell equations by means of an auxiliary differential equation finite difference time domain technique. Since the performance of optical amplifiers depends on the populations of the energy levels participating in radiative transitions, determined principally by the distribution and concentration of the rare-earth ions and by the pumping conditions, the relations between these parameters and the transmittance of the EDPCMA have been studied
We present the first experiments that demonstrate strong angle-independent modification of spontaneous emission spectra from laser dyes in photonic crystals, made of inverse opals in titania. We show that both the fluorescence quantum efficiency and weak disorder play a key role in interpreting the experimental data. We compare the angle-independent emission spectra of dye in photonic crystals with spectra from such crystals with much smaller lattice spacings, for which emission is in the long wavelength limit. The ratio of emission power spectra shows inhibition of emission up to a factor ∼ 5 over a large bandwidth of 13% of the first order Bragg resonance frequency. The inhibition shifts to increasing wavelength with the lattice parameter, confirming the photonic nature of the phenomenon. The center frequency and bandwidth of the inhibition agree with the calculated total density of states, but the measured inhibition of the vacuum fluctuations is much larger. This result is confirmed by experiments using different dyes. We likely probe the strongly modulated local photonic density of states, due to the spatially nonuniform distribution of dye molecules over the unit cell.
Photonic crystals based on silica colloidal crystals (artificial opals) exhibit pronounced stopbands for electromagnetic wave propagation and the corresponding modification of the photon density of states in the visible range. These spectrally selective features can be enhanced by impregnating opals with higher refractive materials like, e.g., polymers. Doping of these structures with dye molecules, semiconductor nanoparticles (quantum dots), and rare-earth ions provides a possibility to examine the challenging theoretical predictions of the inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic bandgap (PBG) materials. First experiments are discussed in which pronounced modification of spontaneous emission spectra and noticeable changes in decay kinetics were observed.
The possibility of the directional enhancement of luminescence at frequencies near the edge of the second photonic bandgap of opal-type photonic crystals has been demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally. The directional patterns of radiation have been simulated by calculating the angular dependences of the density of optical states. The calculation results are compared to the experimental data obtained for the thin-film opals with terbium-containing complexes. Good agreement is achieved after the strong smoothing of the calculated curves; this smoothing is necessary because of the imperfection of the structure of actual samples.