Optical frequency conversion in semiconductor heterostructures

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Project objective

Despite their crucial importance for applications in information technology, cheap and manageable solid state sources are not available in wavelength ranges of interest. These include blue and near-UV lasers (for high density optical storage) and room-temperature tunable mid-infrared lasers (8 - 12 fm, for spectroscopic monitoring of pollution). The purpose of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of coherent sources at these wavelengths by optical frequency conversion in semiconductor heterostructure waveguides. To obtain blue radiation, commercial GaAs-based near infrared lasers can be doubled in ZnSe/ZnMgSSe nonlinear waveguides grown on GaAs substrates. On the other hand, 8-12 fm radiation can be generated as the difference between two near infrared sources in GaAs/AlGaAs waveguides. These two devices should benefit from high nonlinear coefficients of GaAs and ZnSe, possibility of monolithic integration with GaAs-based sources and precise control of geometrical parameters in guide structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. We propose to realize demonstrators of these two devices, to compare their performance to that of conventional nonlinear devices and to investigate new possibilities inherent to semiconductor-based second order nonlinear optics.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

• Thomson-CSF · GOMETZ LA VILLECoordinatorFrance
• Not availableCity levelItaly

Links

• View on CORDIS