Exploring the photon-number distribution of bimodal microlasers with a transition edge sensor
Abstract
A photon-number resolving transition edge sensor (TES) is used to measure the photon-number distribution of two microcavity lasers. The investigated devices are bimodal microlasers with similar emission intensity and photon statistics with respect to the photon auto-correlation. Both high-β microlasers show partly thermal and partly coherent emission around the lasing threshold. For higher pump powers, the strong mode of microlaser { A } emits Poissonian distributed photons while the emission of the weak mode is thermal. In contrast, laser { B } shows a bistability resulting in overlayed thermal and Poissonian distributions. While a standard Hanbury Brown and Twiss experiment cannot distinguish between simple thermal emission of laser { A } and the temporal mode switching of the bistable laser { B }, TESs allow us to measure the photon-number distribution which provides important insight into the underlying emission processes. Indeed, our experimental data and its theoretical description by a master equation approach show that TESs are capable of revealing subtle effects like mode switching of bimodal microlasers. As such our studies clearly demonstrate the benefit and importance of investigating nanophotonic devices via photon-number resolving transition edge sensors.
Citation
Schlottmann , E , von Helversen , M , Leymann , H A M , Lettau , T , Krüger , F , Schmidt , M , Schneider , C , Kamp , M , Höfling , S , Beyer , J , Wiersig , J & Reitzenstein , S 2018 , ' Exploring the photon-number distribution of bimodal microlasers with a transition edge sensor ' , Physical Review Applied , vol. 9 , no. 6 , 064030 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.9.064030
Publication
Physical Review Applied
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2331-7019Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2018 American Physical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevApplied.9.064030
Description
The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework ERC Grant Agreement No. 615613, within the EURAMET joint research project MIQC2 from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme and the EMPIR Participating States and from the German Research Foundation within the project RE2974/10-1. The authors thank the State of Bavaria for financial support.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.