Patent Application: US-91804305-A

Abstract:
a design of a semiconductor saturable absorber that offers a convenient and reliable way to control / decrease the recovery time of the absorption . the absorption recovery time is controlled during the epitaxial growth by using lattice - mismatched layer to induce dislocations , and implicitly non - radiative recombination centers within the nonlinear absorbing region . these lattice reformation layer are interposed between the distributed bragg reflector and the nonlinear absorption region , containing quantum - wells , quantum - dots or bulk semiconductor material . the thickness and composition of the lattice reformation layer is an instrumental to control the amount of non - radiative recombination centers used to trap the optically excited carriers generated in the absorption region .

Description:
with reference to fig1 , the general structure of a semiconductor saturable absorber designed according to this invention includes a semiconductor substrate 1 , for example gaas or inp , suitable for growing high quality compound semiconductors with alternate high and low refractive indices to form the distributed bragg reflector 2 . the dbr layers have thicknesses of a quarter of the optical wavelength at which the dbr is designed to have a maximum reflection . reflectivity can be adjusted by changing the number of constituting layers . the lattice reformation section 3 comprises semiconductor layer ( s ) with a lattice constant different from that of the dbr layers to manage the process of generating defects in the crystalline structure . the device includes the absorbing multi - layers region 4 comprising layer ( s ) with energy band - gap small enough to absorb an optical signal and provide a nonlinear interaction with the signal . depending on the operating wavelength and other desired features , the nonlinear absorbing region 4 can either be lattice - matched or lattice mismatched to the reformation layer 3 . in any case it is assumed that the defects are created within the lattice reformation layer ( s ) 3 and / or at the interface between the lattice reformation layer ( s ) and the nonlinear layer and these defects are migrating and penetrate into the absorbing region 4 , thus reducing the absorption recovery time . additional compound semiconductors 5 are placed above the absorbing region 4 to control the thickness of the fabry - perot cavity defined by the dbr mirror and the top surface of the device . the structure can be terminated by depositing dielectric mirrors 6 with a required reflectivity to adjust the optical properties of the device . fig2 shows an example embodiment of the invention describing the structure of a sesam designed for operation at a wavelength around 1550 nm . the dbr 2 consists for example of 25 pairs of alas and gaas with thicknesses of 134 nm and 115 nm , respectively , grown by molecular beam epitaxy at about 600 ° c . on n - gaas ( 100 ) substrate . the lattice reformation layer 3 consists of inp . this layer is grown at a constant temperature , e . g . 500 ° c . optimized to allow penetration of the growth - related defects into the active region 4 grown afterwards . the thickness of the lattice reformation layer 3 i . e . the thickness of inp is an instrumental to optimize the sesam performance ; i . e . an increase of inp thickness results in an improvement of the crystalline quality of the active region 4 grown on the top of the lattice reformation layer 3 . for example , to achieve recovery times suitable for mode - locking fiber laser , the inp should be about 75 - 200 nm thick . the active region 4 consists for example of five 11 nm thick in 0 . 53 ga 0 . 47 as quantum wells latticed matched to inp and separated by 8 nm thick inp barriers . the cap layer 5 consists of inp whose thickness can be used as an instrumental to change the resonant wavelength of the fabry - perot cavity formed between the dbr 2 and the surface of the device . as an example fig3 presents low - intensity reflectivity curve from a sesam designed according to this embodiment where the thicknesses of inp cap layer was set to 236 nm and the thickness of the lattice reformation layer 3 was 75 nm . cross - sectional transmission electron microscope ( tem ) studies revealed that for samples with a thickness of the inp buffer ( the lattice reformation layer 3 ) in the range of 440 nm or higher the active region 4 was free of misfit and threading dislocations . for samples with a thickness of the inp buffer of about 200 nm tem pictures showed that active region contained a significant number of crystalline defects . a high density of dislocations , distributed near uniformly over quantum - wells area has been observed for samples with 75 nm thick inp buffers . the effect of the thickness of inp - spacer layer on the absorption recovery was investigated by standard pump - probe measurements at a wavelength around the stop - band center of the dbr . the temporal decay of the absorption for samples with different thicknesses of the inp reformation layer is presented in fig4 a , 4 b and 4 c , demonstrating a significant reduction in recovery time of sesam reflectivity with a decrease in the thickness of inp buffer owing to higher density of carrier trapping centers present within the quantum wells . the recovery time constants derived from measurement using single - exponential fitting are 480 ps , 150 ps and 40 ps for samples with thicknesses of inp layer of 440 nm , 200 nm and 75 nm , respectively . despite reduction of the crystalline quality within the active region 4 , samples with 75 nm thick inp buffer layers showed good values of the modulation depth , δr and saturation fluence , f sat . the nonlinear reflectivity curve of such samples is presented in fig5 . the experimental data were fitted numerically using a two - level saturable absorption model . the numerical fit gives the modulation depth of δr = 0 . 15 and saturation fluence of f sat = 7 . 93 μj / cm 2 . sample fabricated according to this embodiment were tested in a linear cavity ed - doped fiber laser to examine their ability to passively mode - lock . it was found that sesam with the recovery time of 480 ps ( inp buffer was 440 nm ) could not passively mode - lock the laser . in contrary , sesams with inp buffer layers of ˜ 200 and ˜ 75 nm respectively provided a reliable self - starting mode - locking . sesams with recovery times below 150 ps provided a reliable self - starting mode - locked operation generating pedestal - free pulses , as shown in fig6 . it is also seen from this figure that faster recovery of the absorption provides shorter pulse durations . another exemplary embodiment of the invention , shown in fig7 , presents the structure of a sesam operating in the wavelength range around 1060 nm . at this wavelength the lattice mismatched between ingaas active region and gaas is lower than for structures operating at 1550 nm . according to this embodiment the lattice reformation region comprises two parts : ( i ) a first layer , 3 , of ingap and ( ii ) a gaas buffer , 3 , between the ingap layer and the active region . the purpose of ingap is to introduce strain and allow creation of the defects within the active region . the gaas buffer 3 ′ serves as an instrumental to control the number of defects propagating into active region 4 ; i . e . the thicker the gaas buffer layer 3 ′ is , the smaller the amount of defects present within the active region is . for example , the thickness of the ingap reformation layer can be ˜ 80 nm while the thickness of gaas buffer can range from few tens of nm to few hundreds of nm . the dbr 2 consists for example of 25 pairs of alas and gaas with thicknesses of 90 . 2 nm and 76 . 4 nm , respectively . the active region 4 consists for example of few 7 nm thick in 0 . 31 ga 0 . 69 as quantum wells separated by 5 nm thick gaas barriers . the cap layer 5 consists of gaas . by changing the thickness of the cap layer 5 and / or lattice reformation layer 3 , 3 ′ one can adjust the resonant wavelength of the fabry - perot cavity formed between the dbr 2 and the surface of the device . fig8 presents an exemplary low intensity reflectivity spectrum for a sesam designed according to the present embodiment ( ingap buffer is 80 nm , gaas buffer is 100 nm , gaas cap is 30 nm and the active region 4 comprises seven quantum - wells ). several sesam samples have been tested in mode - locked yb - doped fiber lasers set - up to prove their ability to passively mode - lock a laser . it was experimentally proved that sesams comprising gaas buffer reformation layers with a thickness of ˜ 100 nm or less provide an efficient mode - locking mechanism leading to generation of transform limited ps pulses with tunable wavelength between 1035 to 1060 nm . on the other hand , devices with a thick gaas buffer layer 3 ′ ( i . e . 400 nm or thicker ) did not mode - lock the lasers . as those skilled in the art could recognize , the design presented in this invention can be used to fabricate sesams operating at other wavelength domain . for example , by changing in composition within the active region , the previous exemplary embodiments can be readily applied for absorber operating at 920 nm and 1300 nm wavelength bands . additional optimization steps may also include rapid thermal annealing ( rta ) for the purpose of improving the crystalline quality within the active region 4 , and optimize sesam properties . according to an application example revealed in fig9 a and 9 b a sesam designed according to the present invention is used to passively mode - lock a fiber laser . here the gain medium 7 , for example erbium ytterbium doped fiber , is pumped optically to generate a signal beam . the pump 8 generates the pump signal which is coupled to the fiber by a coupling region 9 . the laser cavity is defined by a sesam at one side of the gain region and another mirror 10 or 11 at the other side of the gain region . the sesam can be butt - coupled to the cavity or lens coupled . the laser cavity may employ dispersion compensators 13 , including but not limited to grating pairs , prisms , specialty fiber such as dispersion compensation fiber and photonics band - gap fiber . f . x . kärtner et al ., “ soliton mode - locking with saturable absorbers ”, ieee j . sel . top . quantum electron ., vol . 2 , pp . 540 - 556 , 1996 . b . c . collings et al ., “ short cavity erbium / ytterbium fiber laser mode - locked with a saturable bragg reflector ”, ieee j . sel . topics quantum electron , vol . 3 , pp . 1065 - 1075 , 1997 . j . f . heffernan m . h . moloney et al ., “ all optical , high contrast absorptive modulation in an asymmetric fabry - 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