V.N. Shastin

Terahertz lasers based on germanium and silicon

Recent experimental and theoretical results of impurity doped germanium and silicon terahertz lasers are reviewed. Three different laser mechanisms exist in p-type germanium. Depending on the operating conditions and the properties of the crystal, laser transitions can occur between light- and heavy-hole subbands, between particular light-hole Landau levels or between impurity states. Electric and magnetic fields are required for laser operation. In n-type silicon lasing originates solely from impurity transitions of group-V donors, which are optically excited. The properties of these lasers depend upon the chemical nature of the impurity centre and the properties of the host material. The principles of operation are discussed in terms of their basic physical concepts. The state-of-the-art performance of these lasers is summarized.

Far-infrared stimulated emission from optically excited bismuth donors in silicon

Far-infrared stimulated emission from optically pumped neutral Bi donors in silicon has been obtained. Lasing with wavelengths of 52.2 and 48.6 μm from the intra-center 2p±→1s(E:Γ8),1s(T2:Γ8) transitions has been realized under CO2 laser pumping. The population inversion mechanism is based on fast optical-phonon-assisted relaxation from the 2p0 and 2s excited states directly to the ground 1s(A) state leading to relatively small population in the intermediate 1s(E), 1s(T2) excited states.

Stimulated terahertz emission from group-V donors in silicon under intracenter photoexcitation

Frequency-tunable radiation from the free electron laser FELIX was used to excite neutral phosphorus and bismuth donors embedded in bulk monocrystalline silicon. Lasing at terahertz frequencies has been observed at liquid helium temperature while resonant pumping of odd parity impurity states. The threshold was about two orders of magnitude below the value for photoionization pumping. The influence of nonequilibrium intervalley TO phonons on the population of excited Bi impurity states is discussed.

Stimulated terahertz emission from arsenic donors in silicon

Stimulated emission has been obtained from intra-center donor transitions in silicon monocrystals doped by arsenic. The Si:As laser was optically excited by radiation from a CO2 laser. The emission spectrum consists of two lines corresponding to the 2p±→1s(E) and 2p±→1s(T2) intra-center arcenic transitions. The population inversion is formed due to fast 2s→1s(A1) electron relaxation assisted by intervalley longitudinal acoustic f-phonon emission. This keeps the excited donor states below the 2p± state unpopulated. Thus population inversion occurs between the 2p± state and the 1s(E), 1s(T2) states.

Terahertz optically pumped Si:Sb laser

Far-infrared stimulated emission from optically pumped neutral Sb donors in silicon has been obtained. Lasing with a wavelength of 58.2 μm from the intracenter 2p0→1s(T2:Γ8) transition has been realized under CO2 laser pumping at liquid helium temperature. The population inversion mechanism is based on the relatively long-living excited state, 2p0, leading to an accumulation of the photoexcited electrons.

Active mode locking of a p-Ge hot hole laser

The generation of 200 picosecond pulses of far-infrared radiation from a p-Ge hot hole laser (50–140 cm−1) was achieved due to active mode locking by electrical intracavity modulation of the gain.

Far‐Infrared Active Media Based on Shallow Impurity State Transitions in Silicon

Two mechanisms of the inverse population of shallow impurity states in silicon under optical pumping have been proposed and analyzed, using a procedure allowing to reduce the number of required matrix elements of transitions. The first mechanism is based on the resonance interaction of the 2p0 state in Si : Bi with optical phonons. The other one is based on the suppression of acous- tic-phonon-assisted relaxation from the 2p0 state in Si : P due to the momentum conservation law. Spontaneous emission was registered from shallow donors in Si : P under photoionization by a CO2 laser. The dependence of the spontaneous emission intensity on the intensity of pumping radiation confirms the possibility of amplification on impurity transitions. Introduction. The interest in far-infrared (FIR) active media based on shallow impu- rity states in silicon is caused by two reasons. The first one is the low level of lattice absorption of FIR radiation in silicon. The second is the cascade character of the main relaxation processes along the excited coulombic impurity states (1), allowing to expect high efficiency of pumping of impurity excited states population, which is important for reaching continuous lasing. Cascade relaxation means that transitions with a small re- duction of carrier energy are predominating, and the probability that a heated carrier takes part in the amplification is rather high when one of the first excited states or the group of excited states within the step of phonon relaxation are inversely populated. On the other hand, the fast acoustical-phonon-assisted relaxation causes the main complication in obtaining the inverse population of impurity states, since it tends to form the equilibrium distribution at lattice temperature. Thus, the inverse population of impurity states implies conditions in which the distribution is formed by processes with threshold character (interaction with optical phonons, optical pumping) and being faster than acoustical-phonon-assisted and Auger processes, or it implies conditions, where the latter are suppressed for particular states. The other complication originates from the fact that absorption for impurity transitions lies in the same frequency region as possi- ble amplification and thus can prevent it. Hence the possibility of amplification depends on the details of nonequilibrium distribution of charge carriers over excited impurity states.

Population Inversion and Far-Infrared Emission from Optically Pumped Silicon

A mechanism for the generation of population inversion and far-infrared emission in Si with shallow donors is investigated. By optically pumping a phosphorus doped Si crystal with a CO2 laser it was possible to achieve population inversion between the metastable 2p0 state and the 1s(E) and 1s(T) states. Spontaneous emission from these transitions was detected. Frequency measurements of this emission are in agreement with the expected transition frequency. Absorption measurements with a far-infrared probe laser confirm the existence of population inversion between the 2p0 state and the 1s(E) and 1s(T) states.

Mode fine structure of the p-Ge Intervalenceband laser measured by heterodyne mixing spectroscopy with an optically pumped ring gas laser

Abstract Heterodyne mixing of the far infrared p -Ge intervalenceband pulse laser and the optically pumped continuous wave ring gas laser at 117.7 μm (CH 2 F 2 ), 118.8 μm (CH 3 OH) and at 184.3 μm (CH 2 F 2 ) revealed the p -Ge laser mode fine structure with a resolution below 1 MHz, the absolute mode linewidth and a mode tunability of 25 MHz during the p -Ge laser pulse due to sample heating. For the first time an acousto-optical spectrometer has been used in such experiments which analysed the mode spectrum during a single pulse in a 1 GHz band. We have combined the methods of grating, homodyne mixing and heterodyne mixing spectroscopy for the investigation of the p -Ge laser mode fine structure in the broad band emission regime with different resonators including a high-Q tunable resonator for single mode operation.

Low-threshold terahertz Si:As laser

The optical threshold of terahertz intracenter arsenic-doped silicon lasers has been reduced by two orders of magnitude by applying a compressive force to the laser crystal. The Si:As lasers were optically excited with radiation from a CO2 laser operating at a wavelength of 10.59μm. The lowest threshold intensity of 8kW∕cm2 was realized at about 3×108Pa stress applied along the [001] crystal axis. The uniaxial stress breaks the resonant interaction of electrons bound to donors with intervalley f phonons. This changes the upper laser state from 2p± to 2p0, lowers the laser threshold, and increases the output power.