Dispersion compensated mid-infrared quantum cascade laser frequency comb with high power output

Abstract

Chromatic dispersion control plays an underlying role in optoelectronics and spectroscopy owing to its enhancement to nonlinear interactions by reducing the phase mismatching. This is particularly important to optical frequency combs based on quantum cascade lasers which require negligible dispersions for efficient mode locking of the dispersed modes into equally spaced comb modes. Here, we demonstrated a dispersion compensated mid-IR quantum cascade laser frequency comb with high power output at room temperature. A low-loss dispersive mirror has been engineered to compensate the device’s dispersion residue for frequency comb generation. Narrow intermode beating linewidths of 40 Hz in the comb-working currents were identified with a high power output of 460 mW and a broad spectral coverage of 80 cm-1. This dispersion compensation technique will enable fast spectroscopy and high-resolution metrology based on QCL combs with controlled dispersion and suppressed noise.