Fabrication and Characterization of Integrated Waveguide Laser Devices

集成波导激光器件的制造和表征

• 批准号: 0083087
• 负责人: Denise Krol
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: University of California-Davis
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2000
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2000-09-01 至 2004-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0083087&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Fabrication; Characterization; Integrated; Waveguide; Laser

The overall objective of our proposal is to explore the fabrication and characterization of all-waveguide laser devices that integrate a lasing medium with optically written Bragg gratings and a nonlinear optical element in a single phosphate glass waveguide. The nonlinear element can either be a periodically poled (for frequency doubling) or uniformly poled segment (for an electro-optic modulator) of the waveguide device.The rapid growth of the telecommunications industry has led to intensive research and development of new fiber based components, such as Erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs), fiber Bragg gratings and fiber lasers. As a spin-off from telecom applications, fibers are now also rapidly finding their way into other industrial applications, such as medicine and sensor technology. For certain applications, waveguide structures may be preferred over fibers because of their compactness and the ability to integrate different optical components such as splitters, couplers and laser amplifiers or signal sources on a single substrate. Existing waveguide laser technology would be greatly enhanced if it could be integrated with a nonlinear optical, (2) , element in such a way that the laser and the nonlinear optical function were fabricated in the same waveguide. Such an integrated optics approach requires the use of Bragg gratings in the waveguide to define the laser cavity. Second-order optical nonlinearities, which do normally not occur in glasses, can be introduced through a thermal poling process.The research described here addresses the following two issues:1. A study of the formation of refractive index changes and Bragg gratings through an optical writing process in phosphate glasses and waveguides.Here the goal is to effectively write Bragg gratings in phosphate glasses and waveguides using sensitization of the glass through doping or by writing the grating with ultra-short (100 fs) pulses from a high peak-power laser.2. A study of the formation of a second-order nonlinearity through thermal poling in these glasses. Experiments will be carried out to determine whether a second-order nonlinearity can be induced in phosphate glasses and for which poling parameters and glass compositions it is optimized.This technology will lead to new integrated optical devices with applications in telecommunications - in particular WDM (wavelength division multiplexing)- and optical computing, as well as metrology, spectroscopy, and remote sensing.In addition, these studies will contribute to the understanding of photosensitivity and poling in glasses.Because of its multidisciplinary nature and great relevance for the high-tech industry, this research offers a unique opportunity for education and training of graduate students.

我们的建议的总体目标是探索制造和表征的全波导激光器件，集成激光介质与光写入布拉格光栅和非线性光学元件在一个单一的磷酸盐玻璃波导。非线性元件可以是波导器件的周期性极化段（用于倍频）或均匀极化段（用于电光调制器）。电信工业的快速发展导致了对新的基于光纤的元件的深入研究和开发，例如掺铒光纤放大器（EDFA）、光纤布拉格光栅和光纤激光器。作为电信应用的副产品，光纤现在也迅速进入其他工业应用，如医学和传感器技术。对于某些应用，波导结构可能比光纤更优选，因为它们的紧凑性和在单个衬底上集成不同光学部件（诸如分光器、耦合器和激光放大器或信号源）的能力。如果现有的波导激光器技术能够与非线性光学元件（2）集成，使得激光器和非线性光学功能被制造在同一波导中，那么现有的波导激光器技术将得到极大的提高。 这种集成光学方法需要在波导中使用布拉格光栅来限定激光腔。二阶光学非线性，通常不会出现在玻璃中，可以通过热极化过程中引入。研究在磷酸盐玻璃和波导中通过光学写入过程形成折射率变化和布拉格光栅，目标是通过掺杂敏化玻璃或用高峰值功率激光超短脉冲（100 fs）写入光栅，在磷酸盐玻璃和波导中有效地写入布拉格光栅.通过热极化在这些玻璃中形成二阶非线性的研究。将进行实验以确定磷酸盐玻璃中是否可以诱导二阶非线性，以及极化参数和玻璃成分的优化。这项技术将导致新的集成光学器件在电信中的应用-特别是WDM（波分复用）-和光学计算，以及计量学、光谱学和遥感。此外，这些研究将有助于理解玻璃中的光敏性和极化。由于其多学科性质和高科技产业的巨大相关性，这项研究为研究生的教育和培训提供了一个独特的机会。