Single-frequency violet and blue laser emission from AlGaInN photonic integrated circuit chips.

Chip-based, single-frequency and low phase-noise integrated photonic laser diodes emitting in the violet (412 nm) and blue (461 nm) regime are demonstrated. The GaN-based edge-emitting laser diodes were coupled to high-quality on-chip micro-resonators for optical feedback and mode selection resulting in laser self-injection locking with narrow emission linewidth. Multiple group III-nitride (III-N) based photonic integrated circuit chips with different waveguide designs including single-crystalline AlN, AlGaN, and GaN were developed and characterized. Single-frequency laser operation was demonstrated for all studied waveguide core materials. The best side-mode suppression ratio was determined to be ∼36 dB at 412 nm with a single-frequency laser emission linewidth of only 3.8 MHz at 461 nm. The performance metrics of this novel, to the best of our knowledge, type of laser suggest potential implementation in next-generation, portable quantum systems.

Advanced dispersion engineering of a III-nitride micro-resonator for a blue frequency comb.

A systematic dispersion engineering approach is presented toward designing a III-nitride micro-resonator for a blue frequency comb. The motivation for this endeavor is to fill the need for compact, coherent, multi-wavelength photon sources that can be paired with, e.g., the 171Yb+ ion in a photonic integrated chip for optical sensing, time-keeping, and quantum computing applications. The challenge is to overcome the normal material dispersion exhibited by the otherwise ideal (i.e., low-loss and large-Kerr-coefficient) AlGaN family of materials, as this is a prerequisite for bright-soliton Kerr comb generation. The proposed approach exploits the avoided-crossing phenomenon in coupled waveguides to achieve strong anomalous dispersion in the desired wavelength range. The resulting designs reveal a wide range of dispersion response tunability, which is expected to allow access to the near-UV wavelength regime as well. Numerical simulations of the spatio-temporal evolution of the intra-cavity field under continuous-wave laser pumping confirm that such a structure is capable of generating a broadband blue bright-soliton Kerr frequency comb. The proposed micro-resonator heterostructure is amenable to the current state-of-the-art growth and fabrication methods for AlGaN semiconductors.

Differential phase contrast 2.0--opening new "fields" for an established technique.

Differential phase contrast microscopy has become known as a high resolution imaging technique for magnetic micro-structures in the past. The method senses the local induction by measuring the deflection of the probe beam after it passes through a specimen area carrying a magnetic field. Little attention has been paid, however, to the fact that this technique is also capable of measuring electric fields. An application of the technique to measure piezoelectric polarization fields inside multi-layered structures such as quantum wells is demonstrated. For this purpose, piezoelectric fields within non-centrosymmetric crystal structures, based on GaN/InGaN/GaN quantum wells, are investigated. It can be shown that the technique is sensitive to these fields and yields detailed information about the field distribution. The specific information and experimental limitations as well as artefacts of the technique will be discussed in detail and first measurements are shown. The main advantages turn out to be high sensitivity for electric fields, combined with a very high resolution, which is limited only by the STEM probe size. Another advantage is the large achievable field of view.