Researchers have developed chip-scale titanium-doped sapphire lasers
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A team of researchers has developed the first chip-scale titanium-doped sapphire laser, a breakthrough that has expanded its applications from atomic clocks to quantum computing and spectroscopic sensors.
The research was published in Nature Photonics.
When titanium-doped sapphire lasers were introduced in the 1980s, it was a major advance in the field of lasers. The key to its success is the use of gain dielectric materials, i.e. materials that amplify laser energy. Titanium-doped sapphires have proven to be particularly powerful, offering a wider laser emission bandwidth than conventional semiconductor lasers. This innovation led to fundamental discoveries and widespread applications in the fields of physics, biology and chemistry.
Desktop titanium-sapphire lasers are a must-have in many academic and industrial laboratories. However, the large bandwidth of this laser comes at the cost of a relatively high threshold, i.e. the amount of power it requires. As a result, these lasers are expensive and take up a lot of space, largely limiting their use in laboratory research. Yubo Wang, the study's first author and a graduate student in Tang's lab, said that if this limitation is not overcome, titanium-sapphire lasers will remain limited to a small number of customers.
The performance of titanium-sapphire lasers, combined with the small size of the chip, can drive applications that are limited by the power they consume or space, such as atomic clocks, portable sensors, visible light communication devices, and even quantum computing chips.
To that end, Tang's lab demonstrated the world's first titanium-doped sapphire laser integrated with chip-scale photonic circuits, which provides the widest gain spectrum on a chip to date, paving the way for numerous new applications.
The key is the low threshold of the laser. While conventional titanium-doped sapphire lasers have thresholds of more than 100 milliwatts, Tang's lab's system has a threshold of about 6.5 milliwatts. With further tweaking, they believe it can be further reduced to 1 milliwatt. The system they developed is also compatible with the GaN family of optoelectronic devices, which are widely used in blue LEDs and lasers.
The research was published in Nature Photonics.
When titanium-doped sapphire lasers were introduced in the 1980s, it was a major advance in the field of lasers. The key to its success is the use of gain dielectric materials, i.e. materials that amplify laser energy. Titanium-doped sapphires have proven to be particularly powerful, offering a wider laser emission bandwidth than conventional semiconductor lasers. This innovation led to fundamental discoveries and widespread applications in the fields of physics, biology and chemistry.
Desktop titanium-sapphire lasers are a must-have in many academic and industrial laboratories. However, the large bandwidth of this laser comes at the cost of a relatively high threshold, i.e. the amount of power it requires. As a result, these lasers are expensive and take up a lot of space, largely limiting their use in laboratory research. Yubo Wang, the study's first author and a graduate student in Tang's lab, said that if this limitation is not overcome, titanium-sapphire lasers will remain limited to a small number of customers.
The performance of titanium-sapphire lasers, combined with the small size of the chip, can drive applications that are limited by the power they consume or space, such as atomic clocks, portable sensors, visible light communication devices, and even quantum computing chips.
To that end, Tang's lab demonstrated the world's first titanium-doped sapphire laser integrated with chip-scale photonic circuits, which provides the widest gain spectrum on a chip to date, paving the way for numerous new applications.
The key is the low threshold of the laser. While conventional titanium-doped sapphire lasers have thresholds of more than 100 milliwatts, Tang's lab's system has a threshold of about 6.5 milliwatts. With further tweaking, they believe it can be further reduced to 1 milliwatt. The system they developed is also compatible with the GaN family of optoelectronic devices, which are widely used in blue LEDs and lasers.