Chao-Kuei Lee

Synthesis and measurement of ultrafast waveforms from five discrete optical harmonics.

Optical fields have been manipulated like radio frequencies into sawtooth and square-wave patterns. Achieving the control of light fields in a manner similar in sophistication to the control of electromagnetic fields in the microwave and radiofrequency regimes has been a major challenge in optical physics research. We manipulated the phase and amplitude of five discrete harmonics spanning the blue to mid-infrared frequencies to produce instantaneous optical fields in the shape of square, sawtooth, and subcycle sine and cosine pulses at a repetition rate of 125 terahertz. Furthermore, we developed an all-optical shaper-assisted linear cross-correlation technique to retrieve these fields and thereby verified their shapes and confirmed the critical role of carrier-envelope phase in Fourier synthesis of optical waveforms.

Concentration effect of carbon nanotube based saturable absorber on stabilizing and shortening mode-locked pulse

We comprehensively investigated the concentration effect of dispersed single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) in polymer films for being a saturable absorber (SA) to stabilize the mode locking performance of the erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) pulse through the diagnosis of its nonlinear properties of SA. The measured modulation depth was from 1 to 4.5% as the thickness increased 18 to 265 microm. The full-width half-maximum (FWHM) of the stable mode-locked EDFL (MLEDFL) pulse decreased from 3.43 to 2.02 ps as the concentrations of SWCNTs SA increased 0.125 to 0.5 wt%. At constant concentration of 0.125 wt%, the similar pulse shortening effect of the MLEDFL was also observed when the FWHM decreased from 3.43 to 1.85 ps as the thickness of SWCNTs SA increased 8 to 100 microm. With an erbium-doped fiber length of 80 cm, the shortest pulse width of 1.85 ps were achieved at 1.56 microm with a repetition rate of 11.1 MHz and 0.2 mW of the output power under an output coupling ratio of 5%. An in-depth study on the stable mode-locked pulse formation employing SWCNTs SA, it is possible to fabricate the SWCNT films for use in high performance MLEDFL and utilization of many other low-cost nanodevices.

Enhancement of InGaN–GaN Indium–Tin–Oxide Flip-Chip Light-Emitting Diodes With TiO

Enhancement of light extraction of GaN-based flip-chip indium-tin-oxide light-emitting diodes (FC ITO LEDs) with an omnidirectional reflector (ODR) is presented. The ODR consisting of alternating layers of TiO2 and SiO2 is designed to possess a complete photonic bandgap within the blue region of interest, and it is fabricated by E-beam deposition. At a driving current of 300mA and a chip size of 1 mmtimes1 mm, the light output power of the FC ITO LEDs with the ODR reaches 156 mW. This is an enhancement of 31% when compared with the same device with an Al mirror instead. Furthermore, by examining the radiation patterns, the FC ITO LED with the ODR shows stronger enhancement around the vertical direction. Our work offers promising potential for enhancing output powers of commercial light-emitting devices

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We propose an operation switchable ring-cavity erbium-doped fiber laser (EDFL) via intra-cavity polarization control. By using a semiconductor saturable absorber mirror in the EDFL cavity, stable Q-switching, Q-switched mode-locking, continuous-wave mode-locking, pulse splitting, and harmonic mode-locking pulses can be manipulated simply by detuning a polarization controller while keeping the pump power at the same level. All EDFL operation states can be obtained under the polarization angles detuning within 180 degrees. Continuous-wave mode-locking of EDFL with 800-fs pulsewidth repeated at 4 MHz has been obtained, for which the output pulse energy is 0.5 nJ and the peak power is 625 W. Interaction between solitons and the accompanied non-soliton component will lead to either pulse splitting or 5th-order harmonic mode-locking at repetition rate of 20 MHz.

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We report a new design of single-shot cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating (XFROG) with sub femto-joule sensitivity for complete field characterization of ultrashort optical pulse using a 400- nm-pumped type-I noncollinear optical parametric amplifier. Optical parametric gain as high as 10(8) with 0.8-0.9 femto-joules sensitivity had been demonstrated with an un-cooled CCD in this study. The experimental FROG traces have been successfully retrieved with an error no worse than 0.0014. The device had been to be useful for studying the generation mechanism of white-light supercontinuum (WLS).

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The epitaxy of high-power gallium nitride (GaN) light-emitting diode (LED) on amorphous silicon carbide (a-SixC1−x) buffer is demonstrated. The a-SixC1−x buffers with different nonstoichiometric C/Si composition ratios are synthesized on SiO2/Si substrate by using a low-temperature plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition. The GaN LEDs on different SixC1−x buffers exhibit different EL and C-V characteristics because of the extended strain induced interfacial defects. The EL power decays when increasing the Si content of SixC1−x buffer. The C-rich SixC1−x favors the GaN epitaxy and enables the strain relaxation to suppress the probability of Auger recombination. When the SixC1−x buffer changes from Si-rich to C-rich condition, the EL peak wavelengh shifts from 446 nm to 450 nm. Moreover, the uniform distribution contour of EL intensity spreads between the anode and the cathode because the traping density of the interfacial defect gradually reduces. In comparison with the GaN LED grown on Si-rich SixC1−x buffer, the device deposited on C-rich SixC1−x buffer shows a lower turn-on voltage, a higher output power, an external quantum efficiency, and an efficiency droop of 2.48 V, 106 mW, 42.3%, and 7%, respectively.

Multilayer Stack Omnidirectional Reflector

The dependence of thickness and concentration product (TCP) of single-wall carbon nanotubes saturable absorber (SWCNTs SA) on stabilizing and shortening pulsewidth in mode-locked fiber lasers (MLFLs) was investigated. We found that an optimized TCP for pulse energy and nonlinear self-phase modulation (SPM) enabled to determine the shorter pulsewidth and broader 3-dB spectral linewidth of the MLFLs. The shortest MLFL pulsewidth of 418 fs and broad spectral linewidth of 6 nm were obtained as the optimized TCP was 70.93 (μm•wt%), which was in good agreement with the area theorem prediction. This significant effect of TCP on pulse energy, SPM, pulsewidth, and spectral linewidth of MLFLs suggests that the TCP represents the total amount of SWCNTs in SA, which can be used as one of important and key parameters for characterizing the passive MLFL pulsewidth.

Manipulation of operation states by polarization control in an erbium-doped fiber laser with a hybrid saturable absorber

Extraction of coupling of modes (COM) parameters from the manufacturing process of a surface acoustic wave device (SAW) is important in practice. In this study, we employed an inverse algorithm to recover the COM parameters from the measured admittance of a one-port SAW resonator. For completeness, the COM equations, the P-matrix representation and the related COM parameters have been summarized. The admittance of a one-port resonator was derived based on the P-matrix representation. One-port and two-port SAW resonator filters were fabricated and the related responses were measured. The simplex method was then used to determine the COM parameters inversely. The recovered COM parameters of the one-port SAW resonator have been demonstrated to be applicable to simulate not only the frequency response of the one-port SAW resonator but also that of the two-port one.

Sub femto-joule sensitive single-shot OPA-XFROG and its application in study of white-light supercontinuum generation

Dirac-like topological insulators have attracted strong interest in optoelectronic application because of their unusual and startling properties. Here we report for the first time that the pure topological insulator Bi2Te3 exhibited a naturally ultrasensitive nonlinear absorption response to photoexcitation. The Bi2Te3 sheets with lateral size up to a few micrometers showed extremely low saturation absorption intensities of only 1.1 W/cm2 at 1.0 and 1.3 μm, respectively. Benefiting from this sensitive response, a Q-switching pulsed laser was achieved in a 1.0 μm Nd:YVO4 laser where the threshold absorbed pump power was only 31 mW. This is the lowest threshold in Q-switched solid-state bulk lasers to the best of our knowledge. A pulse duration of 97 ns was observed with an average power of 26.1 mW. A Q-switched laser at 1.3 μm was also realized with a pulse duration as short as 93 ns. Moreover, the mode locking operation was demonstrated. These results strongly exhibit that Bi2Te3 is a promising optical device for constructing broadband, miniature and integrated high-energy pulsed laser systems with low power consumption. Our work clearly points out a significantly potential avenue for the development of two-dimensional-material-based broadband ultrasensitive photodetector and other optoelectronic devices.

Growing GaN LEDs on amorphous SiC buffer with variable C/Si compositions

Lasing characteristics from photonic crystal defects fabricated on bulk GaN are investigated. The device demonstrates multimode lasing with linewidths as narrow as 2–3A, and an enhanced spontaneous emission factor β∼0.045. The emission spectra indicate that the laser emission is initiated horizontally in the defect nanocavity and then coupled to the vertical radiation, possibly via photonic crystal Bloch modes or by scattering.