Novel High-Power Microlasers Use 'Bow Ties' of Laser Light

Scientists from Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Germany have demonstrated semiconductor microlasers that use bow-tie configurations of laser light to emit a beam 1000 times the power of disc-shaped microlasers.

The new microlasers hold the promise of small, efficient light sources emitting in the mid-IR to the visible range. Light from the lasers travels in a path that forms a bow-tie pattern, unlike the circular mode of conventional disc microlasers. Disc microlasers have two drawbacks: Because of excessive internal reflection, they emit only a few microwatts of power and the direction of the emitted light is not controlled easily.