MRI: Development of Ultrafast Diagnostic Instrumentation for Mid-IR QCL's

该项目将开发一种综合实验室仪器，用于研究量子级联激光器(QCL)和相关半导体结构中的超快辐射和非辐射过程，并为优化成分、结构和制造技术提供反馈。它将与马里兰大学巴尔的摩县分校(UMBC)的金属有机化学气相沉积(MOCVD)铸造厂的产品对接并进行分析，我们正在该铸造厂制造具有优异性能的室温QCL。它将包括一个超快的中红外(MID-IR)可调谐泵浦-探测装置，覆盖光谱范围3-12微米，具有180飞秒的脉冲宽度，用于测量量子态驰豫时间和损耗机制。开发将建立在UMBC的超快光学和光电研究实验室现有的超快可见光/近红外激光器、光学参数放大器和其他光子学仪器的基础上，以产生超短的中红外光谱探测脉冲。中红外技术用于传感与医疗诊断、环境监测以及化学或生物危害相关的分子光谱特征。作为新的NSF ERC“MIRTHE”(健康和环境的中红外技术)的成员与UMBC合作的QCL研究人员需要这里描述的诊断能力，并已承诺使用它。智力上的优势将包括对QCL和类似半导体结构中辐射过程的更好理解，以及在开发先进、更高效的设备方面。这些功能将向大学和商业开发商提供。开发新的诊断能力的更广泛影响将来自于对多所大学的研究生进行这些复杂量子结构的新类别的物理和工程方面的培训，这些结构在科学、商业和政府领域正变得越来越重要。其次，通过与该领域其他研究人员的密切互动，中红外辐射源的有价值的改进将扩散到与健康行业、环境监测和国土防御相关的一般市场。

MRI: Development of Ultrafast Diagnostic Instrumentation for Mid-IR QCL'sThis project will develop an integrated laboratory instrumentation to investigate ultrafast radiative and non-radiative processes in Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCL's) and related semiconductor structures, and to provide feedback for optimizing composition, structure, and manufacturing techniques. It will interface with, and analyze products from a MOCVD (Metallo-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition) foundry at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in which we are fabricating room-temperature QCL's with excellent properties. It will comprise an ultrafast mid-infrared (mid-IR) tunable pump-probe apparatus, covering the spectral range 3 to 12 microns, with 180 fs duration pulses, to measure quantum state relaxation times and loss mechanisms. Development will build upon existing ultrafast visible/near-IR lasers, optical parametric amplifiers and other photonics instrumentation in UMBC's Ultrafast Optics & Optoelectronics Research Laboratory, to create ultrashort mid-IR spectroscopic probing pulses. Mid-IR technology is used in sensing molecular spectral signatures associated with medical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, and chemical or biological hazards. QCL researchers who collaborate with UMBC as members of the new NSF ERC, "MIRTHE" (Mid-IR Technologies for Health and the Environment), need diagnostic capabilities such as described here, and have committed to its use. Intellectual merit will consist of improved understanding of radiation processes in QCL's and similar semiconductor structures, and in developing advanced, more efficient devices. Capabilities will be made available to universities and commercial developers. The broader impacts of developing new diagnostic capabilities will derive from its use in training graduate students at multiple universities in the physics and engineering of these new classes of intricate quantum structures, which are becoming increasingly important in the scientific, commercial, and government arenas. Secondly, through close interactions with other researchers in the field, valuable improvements in mid-IR radiation sources will diffuse into the general marketplace relating to the health industries, environmental monitoring, and homeland defense.