Difference Frequency Generation in Edge Emitting Photonic Crystal Lasers

In this letter, the first demonstration of an effective index guided edge emitting Photonic Crystal Lasers (EE-PCL) is presented. In this monolithic, multi-section EE-PCL a χ⁽²⁾ nonlinearity is achieved with intracavity broadband phase-matching, offering a self-pumped C-band normalized maximum conversion efficiency of 350% W^-1cm^-2, along with a difference frequency generation tuning range of ∼725 nm. The optimal conversion efficiencies were observed with a straight ridge width section of 4 μm width with an output power >2 mW, in continuous wave (CW) operation when the photonic crystal was biased at 150 mA. The laser exhibited a threshold current density of ∼1.5 kA/cm² in CW operation with a signal to noise ratio of 35 dBm obtained at 2×I_th. A pump wavelength tunability of more than 20 nm is demonstrated. These devices show great promise for future electrically pumped dynamically tunable photon pair sources and massively parallel systems.