光子晶体在半导体激光器中的应用

Applications of photonic crystals in semiconductor lasers

激光的发明,将人类带入光通信、光存储、光显示的高科技文明中,随着高科技的不断发展、进步和应用范围的不断扩大,对激光的要求更高,例如低阈值、高效率、高亮度、高速、小体积、好的模式特性等,这些要求在现有的传统激光器理论及技术中是难以达到的。但是当人们将光子晶体的理论与现有激光物理和技术相结合时,则有望突破传统激光器的性能瓶颈。例如,提高自发辐射速率,同时获得更高的自发辐射向受激辐射的耦合效率,实现激光器的无阈值工作;利用光子晶体对光子态的调制作用,可以获得比传统激光器大几个数量级的光学腔品质因子,大幅度提高激光的亮度、单色性;结合光子晶体微腔及其显著增加的光学腔品质因子,可以提高激光器的调制速率等,因此,人们预期光子晶体科学与技术将成为未来光电子领域发展的核心之一。文章介绍了光子晶体在半导体激光器中的应用,指出光子晶体科学技术引入发展了几十年的半导体激光器中,使半导体激光器展现出更加优异的性能。最后文章作者展望了光子晶体激光器的未来发展和应用的方向。

The invention of the laser brought us into the era of light communication, light storage, light displays, and so on. High quality lasers, with low threshold, high efficiency, high brightness, high speed and small volume, have become essential for future applications. However, all the above-mentioned properties have limitations in traditional laser physics and technology. Photonic crystals combined with modern laser physics and technology have opened a way to overcome the bottleneck of such limitations. Based on the manipulation of photon states in photonic crystals it is now possible to increase the spontaneous emission rates so that a thresholdless laser will finally become realizable, and the simultaneous achievement of an ultra - high cavity quality factor and ultralow cavity volume will result in lasers with much greater brightness and higher speed. It can thus be expected that photonic crystal science and technology will become the basis of future opto-electronics. We describe the use of photonic crystals in semiconductor lasers, whereby the laser characteristics are greatly enhanced, and discuss the potential applications and future developments of photonic crystal lasers.