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Applied Physics Seminar

Tuesday, February 17, 2015
4:00pm to 5:00pm
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Watson 104
Mid-infrared and THz Quantum Cascade Laser Frequency Combs
Jérôme Faist, Professor, Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zürich,

The quantum cascade laser has demonstrated the ability to provide gain over a very broad wavelength range. Recently, we have shown that such broadband devices, when operated in continuous wave, emit as a coherent optical comb in which the phase relation between the comb modes corresponds approximately to a FM modulated laser. By combining a Maxwell-Bloch equations and a modal decomposition, the nature of this mode-locking has been elucidated. We have also recently shown that these combs can also be produced in the THz region of the spectrum, with the gain bandwidth covering a full octave. These new comb lasers enables the fabrication of a dual comb spectrometer based on a quantum cascade laser that offers a broadband, all solid-state spectrometer with no moving parts and a ultrafast acquisition time. We demonstrate a spectrometer and its first proof-of-principle applications.

For more information, please contact Michelle Aldecua by phone at (626) 395-3982 or by email at maldecua@caltech.edu.