High-pulse-energy integrated mode-locked laser using a Mamyshev oscillator
Nature • • science
Key Points:
- Researchers have developed a mode-locked laser using erbium-ion-implanted silicon nitride photonic integrated circuits (PICs), achieving nanojoule pulse energy comparable to fiber lasers and surpassing previous PIC-based lasers by 100 times.
- The laser operates on the Mamyshev oscillator architecture, enabling mode-locking through alternating spectral filtering and self-phase modulation without external seeding.
- It produces a 176-MHz pulse train with high coherence, compressible to 147 femtoseconds, and can directly generate a 1.5-octave-spanning supercontinuum in a silicon nitride waveguide without amplification.
- The source was used to drive a compact terahertz time-domain spectrometer achieving a 5 THz bandwidth and 90 dB dynamic range, demonstrating applications in non-contact chemical analysis and inspection.
- This integrated ultrafast laser technology holds promise for chip-scale frequency metrology and portable spectroscopy systems, advancing compact and scalable photonic solutions.