Design of a coupled microcavity for room temperature OPO.
Résumé
Microcavities have led to noticeable advances for room temperature optical devices. In particular, they are the basic structures of Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers (VCSEL), with key advantages compared to edge-emitting semiconductor lasers [1]. The nonlinearity of quantum wells (QW) was also used to build bistable devices [2,3] and electro-optical modulators [4]. On the other hand, four-wave mixing has also been studied in multiple quantum well structures at room temperature, without any cavity [5]. Here we report the characterization of a double microcavity with InGaAs QW designed to reach the regime of Optical Parametric Oscillation [6,7] which has, to our knowledge, not yet been considered in QW-microcavities at roomtemperature. Excitonic resonances of InGaAs quantum wells are much wider at room-temperature than at cryogenic temperatures, which makes the observation conditions of the oscillation more stringent. In our protoype sample, we study the saturation nonlinearities, and conclude that they are efficient enough to reach the oscillation regime in a sample designed with a sufficient number of QW. Finally, coupled microcavities are promising structures for realizing a compact source of parametric oscillation at room temperature, and ultimately a source of twin beams. References [1] Iga, K. IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics 6, 1201-1215 (2000). [2] Kuszelewicz, R., Oudar, J. L., Michel, J. C. & Azoulay, R. Applied Physics Letters 53, 2138-2140 (1988). [3] Sfez, B. G., Oudar, J. L., Michel, J. C., Kuszelewicz, R. & Azoulay, R. Applied Physics Letters 57, 324-326 (1990). [4] Simes, R. J. et al. Applied Optics 27, 2103-2104 (1988). [5] Chemla, D., Miller, D., Smith, P., Gossard, A. & Wiegmann, W. IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics 20, 265-275 (1984). [6] Savvidis, P G. et al. Physical Review Letters 84, 1547 (2000). [7] Diederichs, C. et al. Nature 440, 904-907 (2006).