A standard tool in optics labs, titanium-doped sapphire lasers are valued for their ability to be precisely tuned across a wide wavelength range. In Stanford University’s Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics Lab, led by Jelena Vučković, researchers use tabletop Ti:sapphire lasers to excite artificial atoms in solid-state quantum optics experiments.
But the lasers typically require a bulky, expensive, high-power pump laser. And the Vučković group, like many others, require only a fraction of the Ti:sapphire’s output power: The researchers in the Nanoscale and Quantum Photonics Lab often end up attenuating the laser from watts to microwatts.
Dissatisfied with the standard laser setup’s wasted power, high cost, and other shortcomings, the Stanford researchers saw an opportunity to miniaturize. Vučković is no stranger to shrinking lab components: She and members of her team had previously collaborated on the construction of a particle accelerator on a chip.1
Taking advantage of recent improvements in...
