Abstract

Mid-infrared optical frequency combs (OFCs) are of prime importance for spectroscopy detection of many gas molecules, such as carbon dioxide and methane because of their strong absorption lines in the mid-infrared regime. Quantum cascade laser (QCL) is one of the dominate mid-infrared laser sources, however it is hard to obtain OFCs using the common mode locking technique due to the ultrashort carrier lifetime [1]. On the other hand, QCLs have successfully produced OFCs based on the four-wave mixing effect [2], the difference-frequency process [3], and the Kerr nonlinearity [4]. This work proposes to use the period-one (P1) dynamics of QCLs subject to optical injection for OFC generation.

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