High-Power Broadband Multispectral Source on a Hybrid Silicon Chip

Photonic integrated circuits (PIC) may expand the spectral bandwidth of currently available optical sources at lower cost, smaller size, reduced vibration sensitivity, and higher brightness.

Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia

For applications in manufacturing, remote sensing, medicine, military, and fundamental science, an ideal laser would have high output power and a diffraction-limited beam. The figure-of-merit to describe this property is the brightness, which scales proportional to output power and inverse to the beam quality factor M².

Lasers that are both compact and have high-brightness are challenging to realize. As the size of the laser is reduced, either the output power is decreased or the M² is increased, primarily due to a combination of thermal effects and high optical intensities. Many applications, such as spectroscopy, infrared countermeasures, free-space communication, and industrial manufacturing, can benefit from a light source emitting at multiple frequencies. A compact and high-brightness laser can then be achieved by spectral beam combining. This photonic integrated circuit (PIC) may expand the spectral bandwidth of currently available optical sources at lower cost, smaller size, reduced vibration sensitivity, and higher brightness.