IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2013
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Introduction to the Issue on Semiconductor Lasers HE guest editors of the IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS (JSTQE) are pleased to introduce the biannual issue on semiconductor lasers. This publication is traditionally associated with the IEEE International Semiconductor Laser Conference (ISLC) and covers new research topics and state-of-the-art developments in the area of semiconductor lasers and related photonic devices. The latest ISLC meeting in 2012 occurred during the 50th anniversary year of the semiconductor laser, so quite naturally, reflections on the inception and current status of these devices were of great interest. The invention of the semiconductor laser is credited to two groups who worked in 1962 in upstate New York—at the then General Electric Corporate Research and Development Laboratory in Niskayuna and the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights. Robert Hall’s team at GE, which is usually given priority for the discovery, published their article on “Coherent light emission from GaAs junctions” in Physical Review Letters, and the IBM group lead by Marshall Nathan had their paper appear in Applied Physics Letters entitled “Stimulated emission of radiation from GaAs p-n junctions.” Later in 1962, Nick Holonyak’s team from the GE Electronics Lab in Syracuse, New York, developed the first visible diode laser in their Applied Physics Letters paper entitled “Coherent (visible) light emission from Ga[As1−x Px ] junctions.” Soon other teams joined the wave of laser designers all over North America and the Soviet Union to establish a host of ground-breaking developments in laser design including Nikolay Basov’s group with its article entitled “A semiconductor quantum oscillator on GaAs p-n junction” in the Proceedings of the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1963. Shortly thereafter, the Nobel Prize in Physics for the invention of the laser (and the maser) was awarded to Basov, Prokhorov, and Townes in 1964. Today after 51 years, the semiconductor laser revolution initiated in upstate New York has spread all over the globe, a fact that is confirmed by the geographical diversity of the selections in this issue of the JSTQE. The issue covers a wide array of semiconductor laser and related photonics technologies, from issues of reliability and modulation speed to next-generation encoding schemes using the functionality that phase–amplitude coupling provides. The issue contains 89 papers, including 31 invited and 58 contributed papers, authored by some of the leading photonics research groups around the world. What is a Laser, circa 2012? This was one of the main discussion topics at an evening Rump Session at the 2012 ISLC meeting in San Diego, CA, USA. The guest editors vigorously thank Prof. P. Blood of Cardiff University for organizing the four short papers that appear in this issue reflecting the stimulating debate that occurred that night. They include Peter’s “The Diode Laser: 50 years on,” W. Chow’s “Are non-classical
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Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSTQE.2013.2272082
light sources lasers?” L. Coldren’s “What is a diode laser oscillator?” and C.-Z. Ning’s “What is laser threshold?” Such a collection of articles shows the intellectual depth of the global semiconductor laser community and points to the myriad of novel technological opportunities still possible in this field of laser design as traditional concepts are challenged, debated, and critically revisited. Invited Papers: These 31 articles cover the state-of-the-art and novel work from recognized authorities on semiconductor lasers as well as new emerging topics, such as silicon-photonic devices and applications of photonic integrated circuits in InP. Contributed Papers: These 58 articles describe some of the most exciting research in our field and are a testament to the creativity and continuing vitality of the semiconductor laser area. These papers are no less important in their discussion of important results in topics such as quantum cascade lasers, photonic crystal devices, nanostructured materials, mode-locking, and surface-emitting lasers. Dynamics: A major emphasis of this issue focuses on the exploration and utility of feedback, chaos, coupled oscillation, and injection in semiconductor lasers. In a series of 22 articles that permeate many of the traditional subject areas of the field, the impact of laser dynamics in VCSELs, mode-locked lasers, quantum dot emitters, and many other laser cavities and geometries are studied. Finally, we hope that you will find that this JSTQE issue on semiconductor lasers contains thought-provoking and exciting contributions from scientists and engineers from around the world. Furthermore, we hope that this issue serves as a milestone for stimulating further advances in the semiconductor laser field for yet another 50 years! ACKNOWLEDGMENT The editors would like to thank the authors of all the papers in this issue for their excellent contributions, as well as the many peer reviewers all over the globe who provided insightful reviews and thoughtful feedback on the manuscripts submitted to this issue. Your dedicated effort has made it possible for us to realize the quality and impact of papers published in this JSTQE issue. We would like to thank the IEEE publication staff, especially, C. T. Lutz and D. Dzuban, for their invaluable support and prompt assistance in helping us with meeting the standard of this journal. We are thankful to Prof. J. Cartledge, Editor-inChief, of the JSTQE, for his encouragement and support that made this issue topic possible. LUKE F. LESTER, Primary Guest Editor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Blacksburg, VA 24061 USA (e-mail:
[email protected])
1077-260X/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
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IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2013
VASSILIOS KOVANIS, Guest Editor Air Force Research Laboratory Wright Patterson AFB OH 45433-7320 USA (e-mail:
[email protected])
TOMOYUKI MIYAMOTO, Guest Editor Tokyo Institute of Technology Precision and Intelligence Lab Yokohama 226-8503, Japan (e-mail:
[email protected])
NELSON SZE-CHUN CHAN, Guest Editor STEPHEN J. SWEENEY, Guest Editor Department of Electronic Engineering and Advanced Technology Institute and Department of Physics State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves University of Surrey City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Guildford, GU2 7XH, U.K. (e-mail:
[email protected]) (e-mail:
[email protected]) Luke F. Lester (S’89–M’91–SM’01–F’13) received the B.S. degree in engineering physics and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering, both from Cornell University in 1984 and 1992, respectively. Since August 2013, he has been with the Department Head of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA. He was a faculty member at the University of New Mexico from 1994 to 2013, where he was an Interim Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering for last two years and the Endowed Chair Professor in Microelectronics. From 1985 to 1994, he was an Engineer with the General Electric Electronics Laboratory, Syracuse, New York, NY, USA, where he worked on transistors for mm-wave applications. Then in 1986, he coinvented the first Pseudomorphic HEMT, a device that was later highlighted in the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest transistor. In 1991, as a Ph.D. student in Prof. Lester Eastman’s Group at Cornell, he researched and developed the first strained quantum-well lasers with mm-wave bandwidths. These lasers are now the industry standard for optical transmitters in data and telecommunications. In all, he has 28 years experience in III–V semiconductor devices and advanced fabrication techniques. In 2001, he was a Cofounder and the Chief Technology Officer of Zia Laser, Inc., a startup company using quantum dot laser technology to develop products for communications and computer/microprocessor applications. The company was later acquired by Innolume, GmbH. He is an active organizer and participant in the IEEE Photonics Society’s conferences, workshops, and journals. He was a US Air Force Summer Faculty Fellow in 2006 and 2007. His other awards and honors include: a 1986 IEE Electronics Letters Premium Award for the first transistor amplifier at 94 GHz; the 1994 Martin Marietta Manager’s Award; the Best Paper Award at SPIE’s Photonics West 2000 for reporting a quantum dot laser with the lowest semiconductor laser threshold; and the 2012 Harold E. Edgerton Award of the SPIE for his pioneering work on ultrafast quantum dot mode-locked lasers. He is also a Fellow of the SPIE. He has published 120 journal articles and more than 240 conference papers. Vassilios Kovanis studied physics at the University of Athens, Greece. He received the Graduate degree from Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA, in condensed matter theory. He is a member of the technical staff at Air Force Research Laboratory, OH, USA. In the past, he served as the Technical Advisor of the Photonics Technologies Branch, Sensors Directorate, Air Force Research Laboratory. His responsibilities include managing an Air Force Office of Scientific Research for optical diverse waveform generation and low noise photonic oscillators. He serves as a DARPA agent for the Microsystems Technology and Strategic Technology Offices in the areas of microwave photonics and transformational antenna programs. He was the Lead Program Manager on the Optical Metamaterials AFRL/SENSORS Directorate enterprise. In September 1989, he joined the Nonlinear Optics Center, Air Force Weapons Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base. He remained with that organization for the next 11 years, working on multiple projects of optical and electronic technologies. During that period, he held research faculty positions with the Departments of Applied Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, University of New Mexico, and was a National Research Council Fellow between 1992 and 1994. Subsequently, he did a stint in the Corporate Research and Development Laboratories with Corning Incorporated in Corning, as a Senior Research Scientist and with BinOptics Corporation in Ithaca, New York, as a Program Manager for next generation photonics product development. Between 2003 and 2005, he was member of the faculty at the Department of Applied Mathematics, Rochester Institute of Technology. His research interests include designing low-noise tunable photonic oscillators, photonic synthetic matter, and applications of compressive sensing to photonic receivers. Among his key technical accomplishments is the first experimental demonstration of synchronization of chaotic diode resonators, based on occasional proportional feedback schemes developed for controlling unstable periodic orbits in chaotic attractors (1994), the first experimental demonstration of localized synchronization in two coupled nonidentical semiconductor lasers (1997) , the experimental demonstration and theoretical analysis of the period doubling route into optical chaos in semiconductor lasers subject to optical injection (1995). He demonstrated a new class of synchronous Sisyphus effects in diode lasers subject to optical feedback (1999) and the prediction of exact quantum collapses and revivals in a nonlinear Jaynes–Cummings model (1991).
IEEE JOURNAL OF SELECTED TOPICS IN QUANTUM ELECTRONICS, VOL. 19, NO. 4, JULY/AUGUST 2013
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Sze-Chun Chan received the B.Eng. degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 2001, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA, in 2004 and 2007, respectively. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering and the State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves at the City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. He received the Dr. Bor-Uei Chen Scholarship of the Photonics Society of Chinese-Americans in 2007 and the departmental Outstanding Teacher Awards in 2009–2012. His research interests include nonlinear dynamics of semiconductor lasers, optical chaos generation, radio-over-fiber, and photonic microwave generation.
Tomoyuki Miyamoto received the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in 1993 and 1996, respectively, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology. In 1996, he joined the Precision and Intelligence Laboratory of the Tokyo Institute of Technology as a Research Assistant. From 1998 to 2000, he was a Lecturer at the Research Center for Quantum Effect Electronics of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since 2000, he has been an Associate Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He was also a Scientific Research Senior Specialist in Research Promotion Bureau of Basic and Generic Research Division of Materials Research and Development in the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology Office from 2004 to 2006. His research interests include semiconductor photonic devices especially VCSELs, and epitaxial growth of III–V compound semiconductor quantum structures. He has published more than 110 papers in his research fields. He received the Young Researchers’ Award from the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers in 1997, the paper award of the 8th Microoptics Conference in 2001, the Outstanding Research Award from the International Communications Foundation in 2003, the Challenging Research Award from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 2003, the Optics Awards for excellent papers from Japan Society of Applied Physics in 2004, and the Young Scientists’ Prize of the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology in 2005. He is a member of the IEEE, IEICE, and JSAP.
Stephen J. Sweeney (S’98–M’99–SM’06) received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in applied physics and the certificate in education from the University of Bath, Bath, U.K., and the Ph.D. degree in semiconductor laser physics from the University of Surrey, Surrey, U.K. He is currently a Full Professor of Physics, Head of Photonics, and an EPSRC Leadership Fellow at the Advanced Technology Institute, University of Surrey, where he leads a group of approximately 50 researchers. Previously he was a Lead Scientist in the Laser and Amplifier Technology group at Marconi Optical Components (now Oclaro) and was a Guest Professor at the Arizona State University, AZ, USA, and Philipps University, Marburg, Germany. He sits on the Steering Committee for the UK III–V Semiconductors National Facility, is a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (U.K.) Peer Review College and Expert International Advisor for the National Science Foundation (USA), the US Department of Energy, the European Union and the Singapore government. He has more than 18 years experience in academic and commercial photonics, and semiconductor research and development. His research interests include novel photonic materials and devices (e.g., bismide and nitride alloys and quantum dot systems) for applications including higher efficiency communications lasers, photovoltaics, solid-state lighting, electronic–photonic integration on silicon, and mid-infrared lasers for sensing. His work has identified the key efficiency limiting factors in quantum well and quantum dot lasers for telecommunications applications and led to the proposal of loss-free bismuth-containing semiconductor lasers. He has also worked on the use of semiconductor lasers in diverse fields including compact systems for water and food analysis and space-based applications. His work has led to more than 300 journal and conference papers, ten filed patents, five book chapters and edited works, and has been featured in the Economist, National Geographic, the Financial Times, and the Sunday Times (U.K.). He is also the Chief Technology Officer at ZiNIR, a photonics start-up specializing in miniaturized spectrometer and sensing systems. He is a Chartered Physicist.
