Gain-switching and mode-locking of quantum cascade lasers
01 January 2000
We demonstrated gain-switching of several 5 and 8-μm quantum cascade lasers. In particular, these devices were driven with fast (- 90 psec) electrical pulses produced by a commercial step-recovery diode (comb generator). The corresponding optical pulses were directly measured with a high-speed quantum-well infrared photodetector (QWIP), a photoconductive detector also based on intersubband transitions in semiconductor quantum wells