In-plane littrow lasing of broad photonic crystal waveguides

Omer Khayam (1) , Cyril Cambournac (1) , Henri Benisty (1) , Melanie Ayre (1) , Romain Brenot (2) , Guang Hua Duan (2) , Wolfram Pernice (3)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Naphel
2 III-V Lab - Alcatel-Thalès III-V lab
3 Department of Engineering Science

Broad photonic crystal waveguides forming open resonators are shown to support an hitherto unnoticed lasing pattern. The feedback for lasing originates in Littrow-type reflections of higher-order modes from the waveguide boundaries. The authors employ plane wave and finite-difference time-domain simulations of bulk crystal and waveguide to substantiate the concept of a distributed Littrow reflector. Experimental results are reported for a 10-μm-wide photonic crystal waveguide deeply etched into InP substrate. In-plane lasing and low modal threshold gain due to longer path lengths are the key features of this resonator.

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Omer Khayam, Cyril Cambournac, Henri Benisty, Melanie Ayre, Romain Brenot, et al.. In-plane littrow lasing of broad photonic crystal waveguides. Applied Physics Letters, 2007, 91 (4), pp.041111. ⟨10.1063/1.2763977⟩. ⟨hal-00872830⟩