Phase locking a 4.7 THz quantum cascade laser using a super-lattice diode as harmonic mixer

Author

Khudchenko, A.V. ; Hayton, D.J. ; Pavelyev, D.G. ; Baryshev, A.M. ; Gao, J.R. ; Kao, T.-Y. ; Hu, Q. ; Reno, J.L. ; Vaks, V.L.

Author_Institution

SRON The Netherlands Inst. for Space Res., Netherlands

fYear

2014

fDate

14-19 Sept. 2014

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

We have phase locked a 4.7 THz Quantum Cascade Laser (QCL) to a stable microwave reference signal. The QCL is a 3^rd order distributed feedback (DFB) laser with a low power consumption of 0.5 W and radiation power of about 0.25 mW. One of the key elements in our experimental setup is a superlattice diode operating as a harmonic mixer and providing the beat signal between the QCL and the 24^th harmonic of a 198 GHz reference signal. A phase locked beat signal is about 20 dB above the noise level for a 30 KHz resolution bandwidth.

Keywords

distributed feedback lasers; laser mode locking; laser noise; microwave photonics; optical harmonic generation; quantum cascade lasers; semiconductor diodes; semiconductor superlattices; bandwidth 30 kHz; frequency 4.7 THz; harmonic mixer; noise level; phase locked beat signal; power 0.25 mW; power 0.5 W; quantum cascade laser; stable microwave reference signal; super-lattice diode; third-order distributed feedback laser; Bandwidth; Harmonic analysis; Masers; Microwave oscillators; Mixers; Quantum cascade lasers; Signal resolution;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Infrared, Millimeter, and Terahertz waves (IRMMW-THz), 2014 39th International Conference on

Conference_Location

Tucson, AZ

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IRMMW-THz.2014.6956455

Filename

6956455