Directly modulated quantum dot lasers on silicon with a milliampere threshold and high temperature stability

Microring lasers feature ultralow thresholds and inherent wavelength-division multiplexing functionalities, offering an attractive approach to miniaturizing photonics in a compact area. Here, we present static and dynamic properties of microring quantum dot lasers grown directly on exact(001) GaP/Si. Effectively, a single-mode operation was observed at 1.3 μm with modes at spectrally distant locations. High temperature stability with T_0~103 K has been achieved with a low threshold of 3 mA for microrings with an outer ring radius of 15 μm and a ring waveguide width of 4 μm. Small signal modulation responses were measured for the first time for the microrings directly grown on silicon, and a 3 dB bandwidth of 6.5 GHz was achieved for a larger ring with an outer ring radius of 50 μm and a ring waveguide width of 4 μm. The directly modulated microring laser,monolithically integrated on a silicon substrate, can incur minimal real estate cost while offering full photonic functionality.

Dynamic and nonlinear properties of epitaxial quantum dot lasers on silicon for isolator-free integration

This work investigates the dynamic and nonlinear properties of quantum dot(QD) lasers directly grown on silicon with a view to isolator-free applications. Among them, the chirp parameter, also named the αHfactor,is featured through a thermally insensitive method analyzing the residual side-mode dynamics under optical injection locking. The αHat threshold is found as low as 0.32. Then, the nonlinear gain is investigated from the gain compression factor viewpoint. The latter is found higher for epitaxial QD lasers on silicon than that in heterogeneously integrated quantum well(QW) devices on silicon. Despite that, the power dependence of the αHdoes not lead to a large increase of the chirp coefficient above the laser’s threshold at higher bias. This effect is confirmed from an analytical model and attributed to the strong lasing emission of the ground-state transition, which transforms into a critical feedback level as high as-6.5 d B, which is ~19 d B higher than a comparable QW laser.Finally, the intensity noise analysis confirms that QD lasers are overdamped oscillators with damping frequencies as large as 33 GHz. Altogether, these features contribute to fundamentally enhancing the reflection insensitivity of the epitaxial QD lasers. This last feature is unveiled by the 10 Gbit/s error-free high-speed transmission experiments. Overall, we believe that this work is of paramount importance for future isolator-free photonics technologies and cost-efficient high-speed transmission systems.

Four-wave mixing in 1.3 μm epitaxial quantum dot lasers directly grown on silicon

This work compares the four-wave mixing(FWM)effect in epitaxial quantum dot(QD)lasers grown on silicon with quantum well(QW)lasers.A comparison of theory and experiment results shows that the measured FWM coefficient is in good agreement with theoretical predictions.The gain in signal power is higher for p-doped QD lasers than for undoped lasers,despite the same FWM coefficient.Owing to the near-zero linewidth enhancement factor,QD lasers exhibit FWM coefficients and conversion efficiency that are more than one order of magnitude higher than those of QW lasers.Thus,this leads to self-mode locking in QD lasers.These findings are useful for developing on-chip sources for photonic integrated circuits on silicon.