MRI: Development of Ultrafast Diagnostic Instrumentation for Mid-IR QCL's

University Of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore MD

Investigators

Abstract

MRI: Development of Ultrafast Diagnostic Instrumentation for Mid-IR QCL's This project will develop an integrated laboratory instrumentation to investigate ultrafast radiative and non-radiative processes in Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCL's) and related semiconductor structures, and to provide feedback for optimizing composition, structure, and manufacturing techniques. It will interface with, and analyze products from a MOCVD (Metallo-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition) foundry at University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in which we are fabricating room-temperature QCL's with excellent properties. It will comprise an ultrafast mid-infrared (mid-IR) tunable pump-probe apparatus, covering the spectral range 3 to 12 microns, with 180 fs duration pulses, to measure quantum state relaxation times and loss mechanisms. Development will build upon existing ultrafast visible/near-IR lasers, optical parametric amplifiers and other photonics instrumentation in UMBC's Ultrafast Optics & Optoelectronics Research Laboratory, to create ultrashort mid-IR spectroscopic probing pulses. Mid-IR technology is used in sensing molecular spectral signatures associated with medical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, and chemical or biological hazards. QCL researchers who collaborate with UMBC as members of the new NSF ERC, "MIRTHE" (Mid-IR Technologies for Health and the Environment), need diagnostic capabilities such as described here, and have committed to its use. Intellectual merit will consist of improved understanding of radiation processes in QCL's and similar semiconductor structures, and in developing advanced, more efficient devices. Capabilities will be made available to universities and commercial developers. The broader impacts of developing new diagnostic capabilities will derive from its use in training graduate students at multiple universities in the physics and engineering of these new classes of intricate quantum structures, which are becoming increasingly important in the scientific, commercial, and government arenas. Secondly, through close interactions with other researchers in the field, valuable improvements in mid-IR radiation sources will diffuse into the general marketplace relating to the health industries, environmental monitoring, and homeland defense.