A sub-40-mHz-linewidth laser based on a silicon single-crystal optical cavity

A sub-40-mHz-linewidth laser based on a silicon single-crystal optical cavity

Flexible single-crystal silicon nanomembrane photonic crystal cavity.

Flexible inorganic electronic devices promise numerous applications, especially in fields that could not be covered satisfactorily by conventional rigid devices. Benefits on a similar scale are also foreseeable for silicon photonic components. However, the difficulty in transferring intricate silicon photonic devices has deterred widespread development. In this paper, we demonstrate a flexible ...

Optimization of a single defect photonic crystal laser cavity

Using nonlinear programing and the geometry projection method, the quality factor of the monopole mode of a single defect photonic crystal laser cavity is improved from 38 000 to 87 000. Beginning with a design that considers only round air holes shifted away from the cavity, the radius of the nearest neighbor and of the surrounding air holes are optimized while satisfying a constraint on the r...

Quantum-limited linewidth of a chaotic laser cavity

A random-matrix theory is presented for the linewidth of a laser cavity in which the radiation is scattered chaotically. The linewidth is enhanced above the Schawlow-Townes value by the Petermann factor K, due to the nonorthogonality of the cavity modes. The factor K is expressed in terms of a non-Hermitian random matrix, and its distribution is calculated exactly for the case in which the cavi...

1.5  μm Lasers with Sub-10 mHz Linewidth.

We report on two ultrastable lasers each stabilized to independent silicon Fabry-Pérot cavities operated at 124 K. The fractional frequency instability of each laser is completely determined by the fundamental thermal Brownian noise of the mirror coatings with a flicker noise floor of 4×10^{-17} for integration times between 0.8 s and a few tens of seconds. We rigorously treat the notorious div...