First-principle derivation of gain in high-index-contrast waveguides
Abstract
From first principles we develop figures of merit to determine the gain experienced by the guided mode and the lasing threshold for devices based on high-index-contrast waveguides. We show that as opposed to low-index-contrast systems, this quantity is not equivalent to the power confinement since in high-index-contrast structures the electric and magnetic field distributions cannot be related by proportionality constant. We show that with a slot waveguide configuration it is possible to achieve more gain than one would expect based on the power confinement in the gain media. Using the figures of merit presented here we optimize a slot waveguide geometry to achieve low-threshold lasing and discuss the fabrication tolerances of such a design.
Additional Information
© 2008 Optical Society of America. Received 15 July 2008; revised 22 September 2008; accepted 30 September 2008; published 3 October 2008. The authors gratefully acknowledge Thomas L. Koch for his helpful discussions and Christina Manolatou for the use of her finite difference mode solver. Research support is gratefully acknowledged from the National Science Foundation Center on Materials and Devices for Information Technology Research (CMDITR), DMR-0120967, the National Science Foundation's CAREER Grant No. 0446571, and the U.S. Air Force MURI program on "Electrically-Pumped Silicon-Based Lasers for Chip-Scale Nanophotonic Systems" supervised by Dr. Gernot Pomrenke.Attached Files
Published - ROBoe08.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 12335
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:ROBoe08
- DMR-0120967
- NSF
- 0446571
- NSF
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
- Created
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2008-11-12Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-08Created from EPrint's last_modified field