Broadband quantum cascade lasers from white light sources to tunable broadband single mode sources

We present the latest advances in the field of broadband quantum cascade lasers for applications requiring broad and gapfree emission or a wide tuning range in the mid-IR. We show a QCL emitting gapfree radiation in pulsed mode from 6 to 7.7 μm capable of room-temperature continious wave operation with output powers of 170 mW at -30°C. We also demonstrate the possibility to replace the glowbar in a FTIR by a broadband free running QCL resulting an improvement of the SNR by 10-20dB.