Instabilities and Noise in Semiconductor Lasers

半导体激光器的相干特性决定了其在光通信信道、计算和存储方面的应用限制。在提高这些限制之前，需要了解激光不稳定性和噪声的来源。通过新颖的统计实验和理论计算，我们提出通过几何重构、材料特性操纵和电子反馈技术的应用来发现发展稳定激光器和降噪的新原理。我们将在从秒到皮秒的时间尺度上探测操作参数和激光响应之间的相关性。我们将研究(i)反射引起的不稳定性，（ii）模式分割噪声和模式跳变，（iii）线宽（功率依赖和独立）和孤立腔和外腔半导体激光器的动力学，以及（iv）低频1/f噪声。本文将研究半导体激光器产生具有亚泊松统计量的量子态。确定性混沌和量子噪声在反射不稳定性中的作用将用非常快的瞬态数字化仪进行研究。我们期望开发出构建稳定激光器的设计策略。蒙特卡罗模拟将与实验相结合，用于检验关于激光不稳定性起源的假设。由此研制的激光器可用于信息处理、抽运固体激光器和精密测量。

The coherence properties of semiconductor lasers determine the limits of their application in optical communication channels, computation and storage. Before these limits can be enhanced, the sources of laser instability and noise need to be understood. Through novel statistical experiments and theoretical calculations, we propose to discover new principles for the development of stable lasers and noise reduction by geometric reconfiguration, manipulation of material properties, and the application of electronic feedback techniques. We will probe correlations between operating parameters and laser response over time scales from seconds to picoseconds. We will study (i) reflection induced instabilities, (ii) mode partition noise and mode-hopping, (iii) the linewidth (power dependent and independent) and dynamics of solitary and external cavity semiconductor lasers and (iv) low frequency 1/f noise. The generation of quantum states with sub-Poissonian statistics by semiconductor lasers will be examined. The role of deterministic chaos and quantum noise in reflection instabilities will be studied with very fast transient digitizers. We expect to develop design strategies for constructing stable lasers. Monte Carlo simulations will be used to test hypotheses on the origins of laser instabilities in conjunction with the experiments. The lasers thus developed could be used for information processing, pumping solid state lasers and for precision measurements.