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Editors’ picks 2024

A tiny titanium:sapphire laser on a chip

Nature Reviews Physics volume 6, page 716 (2024)Cite this article

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If you have ever set foot in an optics lab, chances are that there was a titanium:sapphire laser on one of the benches — regardless of the research undertaken. This solid-state laser is a remarkably versatile light source because it works across a large bandwidth, offers both single- and a multimode operation, and it can either produce a continuous output or emit short pulses.

Reporting in Nature, Joshua Yang and colleagues have built a titanium:sapphire laser on a microchip (pictured, resting against a cube of bulk titanium:sapphire) that has a device footprint of less than 0.15 mm2 but retains the advantages of its traditional table-top counterpart. Additionally, the design of this miniature laser relaxes the requirements of the pump laser that drives the titanium:sapphire, allowing the use of cheap off-the-shelf laser diodes for this task.

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References

Original article

  • Yang, J. et al. Titanium:sapphire-on-insulator integrated lasers and amplifiers. Nature 630, 853–859 (2024)

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Related article

  • Lukin, D. M. et al. Two-emitter multimode cavity quantum electrodynamics in thin-film silicon carbide photonics. Phys. Rev. X 13, 011005 (2023)

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  1. Nature Reviews Physics https://www.nature.com/natrevphys/

    Nina Meinzer

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  1. Nina Meinzer
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Correspondence to Nina Meinzer.

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Meinzer, N. A tiny titanium:sapphire laser on a chip. Nat Rev Phys 6, 716 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00788-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-024-00788-z

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