Integrated laser systems on chip: laser stabilizer and solid-state laser

We demonstrate a tunable chip scale laser in Ti:sapphire on insulator (Ti:SaOI) platform, and show how it can replace commercial tabletop Ti:sapphire lasers in solid state quantum optics experiments without loss in performance. Moreover, we demonstrate an integrated Ti:SaOI optical amplifier operating below 1 μm wavelength with a distortion-free amplification of picosecond pulses to peak powers reaching 1.0 kW. Our work represents a three-orders-of-magnitude reduction in cost and footprint of Ti:sapphire lasers, and introduces solid-state broadband amplification of sub-micron wavelength light. We have also demonstrated on chip silicon nitride based isolators with up to 35dB isolation, as well as unified laser isolators and stabilizers in silicon nitride that rely solely on the optical nonlinearity of this CMOS compatible material. Our current efforts are focused on demonstration of improved performance in these laser systems (such as pumping with a compact and inexpensive laser diode), as well as a demonstration of a modelocked Ti:sapphire laser on chip with a high repetition rate.