Abstract

Due to the extraordinary sensitivity of semiconductor lasers to external optical feedback [1,2], optical isolators are necessary for stable operation in most applications. This is a critical issue for the use of semiconductor nanolasers as light sources in photonic integrated circuits for e.g. on-chip optical signal processing, where optical isolators are notoriously difficult to incorporate, so recently a number of ideas for solutions to this problem have been proposed [3,4]. Here we demonstrate that the recently realised [5] photonic crystal Fano laser (FL) may intrinsically be exceedingly stable towards external feedback, improving upon conventional nanolasers by orders of magnitude.

© 2019 IEEE