Singh Neetesh, Lorenzen Jan, Kilinc Muharrem, Wang Kai, Sinobad Milan, Francis Henry, Carreira Jose, Geiselmann Michael, Demirbas Umit, Pergament Mikhail, Garcia-Blanco Sonia M, Kärtner Franz X
Center for Free-Electron Laser Science CFEL, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany.
Integrated Optical Systems, MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, 7500AE, Enschede, The Netherlands.
Light Sci Appl. 2025 Jan 2;14(1):18. doi: 10.1038/s41377-024-01681-1.
High-power tunable lasers are intensely pursued due to their vast application potential such as in telecom, ranging, and molecular sensing. Integrated photonics, however, is usually considered not suitable for high-power applications mainly due to its small size which limits the energy storage capacity and, therefore, the output power. In the late 90s, to improve the beam quality and increase the stored energy, large-mode-area (LMA) fibers were introduced in which the optical mode area is substantially large. Such LMA fibers have transformed the high-power capability of fiber systems ever since. Introducing such an LMA technology at the chip-scale can play an equally disruptive role with high power signal generation from an integrated photonics system. To this end, in this work we demonstrate such a technology, and show a very high-power tunable laser with the help of a silicon photonics based LMA power amplifier. We show output power reaching 1.8 W over a tunability range of 60 nm, spanning from 1.83 µm to 1.89 µm, limited only by the seed laser. Such an integrated LMA device can be used to substantially increase the power of the existing integrated tunable lasers currently limited to a few tens of milliwatts. The power levels demonstrated here reach and surpass that of many benchtop systems which truly makes the silicon photonics based integrated LMA device poised towards mass deployment for high power applications without relying on benchtop systems.
高功率可调谐激光器因其在电信、测距和分子传感等领域的巨大应用潜力而备受追捧。然而，集成光子学通常被认为不适合高功率应用，主要是因为其尺寸小，限制了能量存储能力，从而限制了输出功率。在20世纪90年代后期，为了提高光束质量并增加存储能量，引入了大模场面积（LMA）光纤，其中光模场面积显著增大。从那时起，这种LMA光纤改变了光纤系统的高功率能力。在芯片级引入这种LMA技术可以在集成光子学系统产生高功率信号方面发挥同样具有颠覆性的作用。为此，在这项工作中，我们展示了这样一种技术，并借助基于硅光子学的LMA功率放大器展示了一种非常高功率的可调谐激光器。我们展示了在60nm的可调谐范围内输出功率达到1.8W，范围从1.83μm到1.89μm，仅受种子激光器限制。这种集成LMA器件可用于大幅提高现有集成可调谐激光器的功率，目前其功率限制在几十毫瓦。这里展示的功率水平达到并超过了许多台式系统的功率，这使得基于硅光子学的集成LMA器件真正有望在不依赖台式系统的情况下大规模部署用于高功率应用。
