Optical Sources
(LED and LASER)
• The principal optical sources are heterojunction structured
semiconductor laser diodes also referred to as injection laser diodes or
ILDs and light emitting diodes ( LEDs)
• Heterojunction consists of two adjoining semiconductor materials with
different band gap energies
• III – V group semiconductor materials
• Radiative and non-radiative recombinations
• Coherent and non-coherent sources
• Differences between LEDs and Lasers
• Multimode fibers are fed with LED as source
• Direct and Indirect band gap semiconductors
Optical Power
Fundamental Lasing Operation
• Absorption: An atom in the ground state might
absorb a photon emitted by another atom, thus
making a transition to an excited state.
• Spontaneous Emission: random emission of a photon,
which enables the atom to relax to the ground state.
• Stimulated Emission: An atom in an excited state
might be stimulated to emit a photon by another
incident photon.
Spontaneous & Stimulated
Emissions
LASER
• In laser, the light amplifier is the pumped active
medium (biased semiconductor region) where emitted
photons stimulate more photon emission.
• Feedback is obtained by placing some kind of reflector
(mirror/filter) in the optical resonator.
• Frequency selection is achieved by the resonators,
which admits only certain modes.
• Output coupling is accomplished by making one of the
resonator mirrors partially transmitting.
Lasing in a pumped active medium
• In thermal equilibrium the stimulated emission is
essentially negligible, since the density of electrons in the
excited state is very small. This is LED like operation with
mostly spontaneous emission.
• Stimulated emission will exceed absorption only if the
population of the excited states is greater than that of the
ground state. This condition is known as Population
Inversion. Population inversion is achieved by various
pumping techniques.
• In a semiconductor laser, population inversion is
accomplished by injecting electrons into the material to fill
the lower energy states of the conduction band.
How a Laser Works
In Stimulated Emission incident and
stimulated photons will have
Attribute Result
Identical Energy Narrow line width
Identical Direction Narrow beam width
Identical Phase Temporal Coherence
Identical Polarization Coherently polarized light
Fabry-Perot Laser (resonator)
cavity
Laser Operation & Lasing Condition
• To determine the lasing condition and resonant frequencies, we should
focus on the optical wave propagation along the longitudinal direction,
z-axis. The optical field intensity, I, can be written as:
I ( z , t ) I ( z ) e j ( t z )
• Lasing is the condition at which light amplification becomes possible by
virtue of population inversion. Then, stimulated emission rate into a
given EM mode is proportional to the intensity of the optical radiation
in that mode. In this case, the loss and gain of the optical field in the
optical path determine the lasing condition.
• The radiation intensity of a photon at energy hvaries exponentially
with a distance z amplified by factor g, and attenuated by factor
according to the following relationship:
Threshold gain & current density
1 1
g th ln
2 L R1 R2
Laser starts to " lase" iff : g g th
For laser structure with strong carrier confinement, the threshold current
Density for stimulated emission can be well approximated by:
g th J th
: constant depends on specific device constructi on
Semiconductor laser rate equations
• Rate equations relate the optical output power, or # of photons per unit
volume,
, to the diode drive current or # of injected electrons per unit
volume, n. For active (carrier confinement) region of depth d, the rate
equations are:
d
Cn R sp
dt ph
Photon rate stimulated emission spontaneou s emission photon loss
dn J n
Cn
dt qd sp
electron rate injection spontaneou s recombinat ion stimulated emission
C : Coefficient expressing the intensity of the optical emission & absorption process
Rsp : rate of spontaneous emission into the lasing mode
ph : photon life time
J : Injection current density
Threshold current Density & excess electron density
• At the threshold of lasing: 0, d / dt 0, Rsp 0
1
from eq. [4 - 25] Cn / ph 0n nth
C ph
• The threshold current needed to maintain a steady state threshold
concentration of the excess electron, is found from electron rate equation
under steady state condition dn/dt=0 when the laser is just about to lase:
J th nth nth
0 J th qd
qd sp sp
Laser operation beyond the threshold
J J th
• The solution of the rate equations [4-25] gives the steady state photon
density, resulting from stimulated emission and spontaneous emission
as follows:
ph
s ( J J th ) ph Rsp
qd
