Grant: Idea to Innovation

The current Idea to Innovation proposal aims to build, investigate and improve a fully polarization maintaining laser prototype allowing for passive mode-locking of unchirped long light pulses (>500 ps), compatible with low power demands. Mode-locked lasers, radiating pulsed coherent light, form the foundation for various applications ranging from telecommunications, spectroscopy, metrology, to quantum optics. While many different mode-locking techniques have been demonstrate, none of them managed to generate nanosecond pulses with Fourier-limited bandwidth (in the megahertz spectral bandwidth range), characteristics that are required for, e.g., the efficient excitation of molecules or even multiplexing in telecommunication networks. Indeed, our present invention based on a passive mode-locking scheme actually addresses the intrinsic bandwidth and complexity limitations of active mode-locking techniques while setting the base toward a fully integrated system (i.e. transposed to an on-chip CMOS compatible architecture). Our laser scheme is based on the use of a nonlinear medium (i.e. a micro-ring resonator) within a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror, thus offering a reduction of the amount of power required to achieve mode-locking by a nonlinear phase shift, while acting, at the same time, as an ultra-sharp filter limiting the bandwidth of the pulsed laser to a record low 105MHz at a repetition rate of 9.5 MHz. Furthermore, such a scheme present the possibility of generating directly quantum correlated photon pairs from a pulsed excitation, a crucial characteristic for developments in the field of quantum optics. Our project will then focus on the implementation of commercial production processes to build a laser prototype fully based on low-cost and CMOS-compatible components. Our mode-locking laser scheme has already raised significant interest in companies that manufacture laser systems at telecom wavelengths, as well as resellers of photonic systems for applications in the field of quantum optics. We intend to push forward the development of our invention with the aim to increase the value of our intellectual property and enlarge the number of potential customers interested in our technology.