Scalable classical and quantum semiconductor light sources

Boubacar Kante1,2

1Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

2Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

Classical and quantum light sources play a fundamental role in science and technology from quantum computing, to communications, manufacturing, defense, sensing, medicine, or imaging. However, scaling the power of lasers has always come at the cost of single mode operation, a scaling question that has been investigated, without success, since the invention of lasers in 1958. In the first part of the talk, I will propose a solution to this question and discuss a “scale-invariant” laser that remains single mode irrespective of its cavity size. I will show that the discovered strategy, named Berkeley Surface Emitting Laser (BerkSEL), goes beyond the Schawlow-Townes two-mirror strategy that is used by all existing lasers. I will conclude that mirrors are bad for the scaling of lasers [1]. I will also briefly discuss topological lasers that my group pioneered [2-4]. In the second part of the talk, I will discuss a scalable quantum optics platform fully based on silicon with potential applications in future quantum networks [5-6].

References
1. R. Contractor, W. Noh, W. Redjem, W. Qarony, E. Martin, S. Dhuey, A. Schwartzberg, and B. Kanté, Nature 608, 692–698 (2022).
2. B. Bahari, A. Ndao, F. Vallini, A. El Amili, Y. Fainman, B. Kanté, Science 358, 636-640 (2017).
3. B. Bahari, L. Hsu, S. H. Pan, D. Preece, A. Ndao, A. El Amili, Y. Fainman, and B. Kanté, Nature Phys. 17, 700–703 (2021).
4. A. Kodigala, T. Lepetit, Q. Gu, B. Bahari, Y. Fainman, and B. Kanté, Nature 541, 196 – 199 (2017).
5. W. Redjem, Y. Zhiyenbayev, W. Qarony, V. Ivanov, C. Papapanos, W. Liu, J. Jhuria, Z. Y. Al Balushi, S. Dhuey, A. Schwartzberg, L. Z. Tan, T. Schenkel, and B. Kanté, Nature Commun. 14, 3321 (2023).
6. K. Jhuria, V. Ivanov, D. Polley, Y. Zhiyenbayev, W. Liu, A. Persaud, W. Redjem, W. Qarony, P. Parajuli, Q. Ji, A. J. Gonsalves, J. Bokor, L. Z. Tan, B. Kanté and T. Schenkel, Nat Commun 15, 4497 (2024)