MODULE 3

UNIT I: OPTICAL SOURCES

OPTICAL SOURCES:
Characteristics of the fiber taken into account while
choosing an optical source compatible with optical
waveguide:
 Geometry of source
 Attenuation as a function of wavelength
 Its group delay distortion (bandwidth)
 Modal characteristics

ENERGY BANDGAP:
 Semiconductor material have conduction properties that lie
between metals & insulators.
 A Si atom has four electrons in its outer shell, makes
covalent bonds with its neighboring atoms in a crystal.
• Such outer shell electrons – Valence electrons.

• The conduction properties of a semiconductor can be

interpreted with aid of energy-band diagram shown in
figure1.

Figure1: a) Energy level diagram showing the excitation of an electron from valence
band to the conduction band. b) Equal electron & hole concentrations in an intrinsic
semiconductor created by thermal excitation of electrons across the bandgap.
• In a semiconductor valence electrons occupy a band of
energy levels –valence band(Lowest band)

• Next higher band of allowed energy levels for the

electrons-Conduction band.

• In a pure crystal at low temperatures, the conduction band

is completely empty, & valence band is completely full.

• These two bands are separated by an energy gap, or

bandgap, in which no energy levels exist.
• Band gap represents the minimum energy difference
between the top of valence band & the bottom of the
conduction band.
• As the temperature is raised, some electrons are thermally
excited across the bandgap.

• For Si this excitation energy must be > 1.1eV – bandgap

energy.

• Electron excitation process gives rise to a concentration (n)

of free electrons in the conduction band & an equal
concentration (p) of vacancies or holes in valence band as
shown in figure 1 (b).

• Both free electrons & holes are mobile within the material,
contribute to electrical conductivity
• i.e. an electron in valence band can move into a vacant
hole, hole move in opposite direction to the electron flow
as shown in figure1 (a).

• When an electron propagates in a semiconductor, it

interacts with periodically arranged constituent atoms of
material & thus experiences external forces.
Fext = me x acrys

Where me = effective mass-described by a quantum

mechanical quantity
• The concentration of electrons & holes – intrinsic carrier
concentration(ni) for perfect material with no
imperfections or impurities is given by;

Where, K= constant i.e. characteristic of the material

T= temperature in deg Kelvin
kg = Boltzmann’s constant
h= Planck’s constant
me & mh= effective masses of electrons & holes
Direct & indirect bandgap:
• In order for electron transitions to take place to (or) from
conduction band with the absorption or emission of photon
respectively, both the energy & momentum must be
conserved.

• Based on shape of the bandgap as a function of

momentum, semiconductors are classified as:
– Direct Bandgap
– Indirect bandgap
1. Direct Bandgap:
• Consider recombination of an electron & hole,
accompanied by the emission of a photo shown in
figure2(a).

Figure2: (a) Electron recombination & the associated photon emisiion for a direct
bandgap material.
• Simplest & most probable recombination process , where
electron & hole have the same momentum value.
• The minimal energy state in conduction band & the
maximal energy state in the valence band are each
characterized by a crystal momentum.

• If the crystal momentum of electrons & holes is same in

both the conduction & valence band, an electron can
directly emit a photon.

• A photon of energy Eg (bandgap energy), can produce an

electron-hole pair easily, because electron does not require
very much momentum( here photon excites electron)

• Exs: Amorphous silicon, GaAs.

2. Indirect bandgap Materials:
• The minimum energy levels in conduction band &
maximum energy levels in valence band occur at different
values of momentum.

Figure2(b): Electron recombination for indirect bandgap materials require phonon of

energy & momentum
• A photon cannot be emitted because the electron must
pass through an intermediate state & transfer momentum
to the crystal lattice.

• An electron interact not only eith photon to gain energy,

but also with alattice vibration-phonon in order to gain
momentum.

• Energy vs crystal momentum shows that an electron cannot

shift from highest energy state in valence band to lowest
state in conduction band without change in momentum.

• Here almost all of the energy comes from a photon while

almost all of the momentum comes from phonon.
LIGHT EMITTING DIODES (LED):

• Used as source for optical communication system requiring

bit rates less than 100-200Mbps with multimode fiber-
coupled optical power in the tens of microwatts.

requires less complex drive circuitry than laser diodes

 thermal or optical stabilization not needed
 Fabricated less expensively with higher yields
LED STRUCTURE:

In fiber transmission applications, LED must have:

 High radiance ouput
 Fast emission response time
 High quantum efficiency

1. Radiance or Brightness:
• Measure of the optical power radiated into a unit
solid angle per unit area of the emitting surface.

• High radiances are necessary to couple

sufficiently high optical power levels into a fiber.
2. Emission response time:
• Time delay between the application of a current pulse
& onset of optical emission.
• Factor limiting bandwidth with which the source can be
modulated directly by varying the injected current.

3. Quantum efficiency:
Related to the fraction of injected electron-hole pairs that
recombine radiatively.

• To achieve a high radiance & a high quantum efficiency,

LED structure must provide a means of confining the
charge carriers & stimulated optical emission to the
active region of the pn junction where radiative
recombination takes place.
• Carrier confinement is used to achieve high level
of radiative recombination in the active region of
the device & high quantum efficiency.

• Optical confinement prevents the absorption of

emitted radiation by the material surrounding the
pn junction.

• To achieve carrier & optical confinement LED

configurations widely used:
Homojunctions
Single & double heterojunctions
Most effective configuration is double
heterojunction structure.

Figure 1: Cross Section of typical GaAlAs double-heterostructure LED.

Hetero junction: junction formed by dissimilar
semiconductors.
• Fig 1 shows the Double hetero-junction structure
with two different alloy layers (semiconductors)
on each side of active region.

• Because of the sandwich structure of differently

composed alloy layers both carrier & optical field
are confined in central active layer.

• Band gap difference of adjacent layers provides

carrier confinement.

• Difference in refractive index of adjacent layers

provides optical confinement.
• The crosshatched regions represent the energy
levels of free charge.
• Recombination occurs only in active InGaAsP
layer.
• The two materials have different bandgap
energies & different refractive indices.
• The changes in bandgap energies create potential
barrier for both holes & electrons.
• The free charges can recombine only in narrow,
well defined active layer side.
• DH structure will confine both hole & electrons to
a narrow active layer.
• Under forward bias, there will be a large number
of carriers injected into active region where they
are efficiently confined.
• Carrier recombination occurs in small active
region so leading to an efficient device.

• Advantage: active region has a higher refractive

index than the materials on either side, hence
light emission occurs in an optical waveguide,
which serves to narrow the output beam.

• Two basic LED configurations used in optical fiber

links are:
Surface emitting LED
Edge emitting LED
Surface Emitting LEDs or Burrus or Front Emitters:
• The plane of active light emitting region is oriented
perpendicularly to the axis of the fiber.

• A DH diode is grown on an N-type substrate at the top of

the diode as shown in figure2.

Figure 2: Schematic of high radiance surface emitting LED

• A circular well is etched through the substrate of the
device, into which a fiber is cemented to accept the
emitted light.

• The circular active area in practical surface emitters is

nominally 50micrometer in diameter & upto
2.5micrometer thick.

• At the back of device is a gold heat sink. The current

flows through the p-type material & forms the small
circular active region in the intense beam of light.

• The emission pattern is isotropic with a 120° half

power beam width.
• This isotropic pattern is called Lambertian
pattern. The source is equally bright when viewed
from any direction, but power diminishes as cosθ.
• Where θ= angle between the viewing direction &
the normal to the surface.

• The power is down to 50% of its peak when θ=

60° & hence total half power beam width is 120°.

Edge Emitter:
• Edge emitter shown in figure 3, consists of an
active junction region, which is source of the
incoherent light & two guiding layers
• The guiding layers both have R.I which is lower than that of
active region but has R.I greater than surrounding material.

Figure 3: Schematic of an edge emitting double heterojunction LED. The

output beam is lambertian in the plane of the pn junction & highly
directional perpendicular to the pn junction.

• This structure forms a waveguide channel that directs

the optical radiation towards the fiber core.
• To match the typical fiber core diameter(50-100µm),
the contact stripes for edge emitters are 50-70µm
wide.

• Length of the active region is 100-150µm. The emission

pattern of the edge emitter is more directional than
that of surface emitter, as shown is illustrated in figure
3.

• In the plane parallel to the junction, where there is no

waveguide effect, the emitted beam is lambertian with
a half power width of θII = 120.

• In the plane perpendicular to the junction, the half

power beam θ has been made as small as 25-35° by a
proper choice of waveguide thickness.
LIGHT EMITTING DIODES (LED):

• Used as source for optical communication system requiring

bit rates less than 100-200Mbps with multimode fiber-
coupled optical power in the tens of microwatts.

requires less complex drive circuitry than laser diodes

 thermal or optical stabilization not needed
 Fabricated less expensively with higher yields
LED STRUCTURE:

In fiber transmission applications, LED must have:

 High radiance ouput
 Fast emission response time
 High quantum efficiency

1. Radiance or Brightness:
• Measure of the optical power radiated into a unit solid
angle per unit area of the emitting surface.

• High radiances are necessary to couple sufficiently high

optical power levels into a fiber.
2. Emission response time:
• Time delay between the application of a current pulse &
onset of optical emission.
• Factor limiting bandwidth with which the source can be
modulated directly by varying the injected current.

3. Quantum efficiency:
Related to the fraction of injected electron-hole pairs that
recombine radiatively.

• To achieve a high radiance & a high quantum efficiency, LED

structure must provide a means of confining the charge
carriers & stimulated optical emission to the active region
of the pn junction where radiative recombination takes
place.
• Carrier confinement is used to achieve high level of
radiative recombination in the active region of the device &
high quantum efficiency.

• Optical confinement prevents the absorption of emitted

radiation by the material surrounding the pn junction.

• To achieve carrier & optical confinement LED configurations

widely used:
Homojunctions
Single & double heterojunctions
Most effective configuration is double heterojunction
structure.

Figure 1: Cross Section of typical GaAlAs double-heterostructure LED.

Hetero junction: junction formed by dissimilar

semiconductors.
• Fig 1 shows the Double hetero-junction structure with two
different alloy layers (semiconductors) on each side of
active region.

• Because of the sandwich structure of differently composed

alloy layers both carrier & optical field are confined in
central active layer.

• Band gap difference of adjacent layers provides carrier

confinement.

• Difference in refractive index of adjacent layers provides

optical confinement.
• The crosshatched regions represent the energy levels of
free charge.
• Recombination occurs only in active InGaAsP layer.
• The two materials have different bandgap energies &
different refractive indices.
• The changes in bandgap energies create potential barrier
for both holes & electrons.
• The free charges can recombine only in narrow, well
defined active layer side.
• DH structure will confine both hole & electrons to a narrow
active layer.
• Under forward bias, there will be a large number of carriers
injected into active region where they are efficiently
confined.
• Carrier recombination occurs in small active region so
leading to an efficient device.

• Advantage: active region has a higher refractive index than

the materials on either side, hence light emission occurs in
an optical waveguide, which serves to narrow the output
beam.

• Two basic LED configurations used in optical fiber links are:

Surface emitting LED
Edge emitting LED
Surface Emitting LEDs or Burrus or Front Emitters:
• The plane of active light emitting region is oriented
perpendicularly to the axis of the fiber.

• A DH diode is grown on an N-type substrate at the top of

the diode as shown in figure2.

Figure 2: Schematic of high radiance surface emitting LED

• A circular well is etched through the substrate of the
device, into which a fiber is cemented to accept the
emitted light.

• The circular active area in practical surface emitters is

nominally 50micrometer in diameter & upto 2.5micrometer
thick.

• At the back of device is a gold heat sink. The current flows

through the p-type material & forms the small circular
active region in the intense beam of light.

• The emission pattern is isotropic with a 120° half power

beam width.
• This isotropic pattern is called Lambertian pattern. The
source is equally bright when viewed from any direction,
but power diminishes as cosθ.
• Where θ= angle between the viewing direction & the
normal to the surface.

• The power is down to 50% of its peak when θ= 60° &

hence total half power beam width is 120°.

Edge Emitter:
• Edge emitter shown in figure 3, consists of an active
junction region, which is source of the incoherent light &
two guiding layers.
• The guiding layers both have R.I which is lower than that of
active region but has R.I greater than surrounding material.

Figure 3: Schematic of an edge emitting double heterojunction LED. The output beam
is lambertian in the plane of the pn junction & highly directional perpendicular to the
pn junction.

• This structure forms a waveguide channel that directs the

optical radiation towards the fiber core.
• To match the typical fiber core diameter(50-100µm), the
contact stripes for edge emitters are 50-70µm wide.

• Length of the active region is 100-150µm. The emission

pattern of the edge emitter is more directional than that of
surface emitter, as shown is illustrated in figure 3.

• In the plane parallel to the junction, where there is no

waveguide effect, the emitted beam is lambertian with a
half power width of θII = 120.

• In the plane perpendicular to the junction, the half power

beam θ has been made as small as 25-35° by a proper
choice of waveguide thickness.
Module 3
LASER DIODES (Light Amplification by Stimulated
Emission of Radiation):
• For Optical fiber systems the laser sources used almost are
semiconductor laser diodes.
• The operation is described by the formation of an
electromagnetic standing wave within a cavity (optical
resonator) which provides an Output of monochromatic
highly coherent radiation & light beam is very directional.

• Laser action is the result of three key processes:

Photon Absorption
Spontaneous Emission
Stimulated Emission
These three processes are represented by the simple two
energy level diagrams shown in figure 1.

Figure1: Three key transition processes involved in laser action.

The open circle --- the initial state of electron &
Heavy dot--- represents the final state.
Incident photons are shown on the left of each diagram & emitted photons are shown
on the right.

Where E1= ground state energy

E2= excited state energy
• According to Planck’s law, a transition b/w E1 & E2 states
involves absorption or emission of photon energy hν12=
E2-E1

• Normally system is in ground state. When a photon of

energy hν12 impinges on system, an electron in state E1
can absorb the photon energy & be excited to state E2 as
shown in figure1(a).

• Since E2 is an unstable state, the electron will shortly return

to ground state, thereby emitting a photon of energy hν12.

• This occurs without external stimulation & is called

Spontaneous Emission as shown in figure 1(b) & are
isotropic & random phase. Thus appear as a narrow band
gaussian output.
• The electron can also be induced to make a downward
transition from excited level to ground state level by an
external stimulation as shown in figure1©.

• If a photon of energy hν12 impinges on the system while

electron is still in its excited state, the electron is
immediately stimulated to drop to the ground state & gives
off a photon of energy hν12.

• This emitted photon is in phase with the incident photon &

resultant emission is known as Stimulated Emission.

• Stimulated emission will exceed absorption only if the

population of the excited states is greater than that of the
ground state.
• This condition is known as Population Inversion.
• Population inversion is not an equilibrium condition & this
is achieved by various pumping techniques.

• In semiconductor Lasers, population inversion is achieved

by injecting electrons into the material at device contacts
or through an optical absorption method by means of
externally injected photons.
LASER Diode Modes & Threshold Conditions:

• For optical fiber communication systems requiring

bandwidth greater than 200 MHz, the semiconductor
injection Laser diode is preferred over LED.

• Typically Laser diodes have:

Response time τ< 1ns
Spectral width of 2nm or less
Capable of coupling 10s to 100s mWatts of useful luminescent
power into optical fibers with small cores & small mode field
diameter.
Multilayered heterojunction devices

• Two configurations of LASER:

Fabry Perot Cavity resonator
Distributed feedback Laser
• Stimulated emission in semiconductor lasers arises from optical
transitions b/w distributions of energy states in the valence &
conduction bands.
1. Fabry-Perot Laser:
• The radiation in the laser diode is generated within a Fabry-Perot
resonator cavity, shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: Fabry-Perot resonator cavity for a Laser diode. The cleaved crystal ends
function as reflecting mirrors. The unused end (rear facet) can be coated with a
dielectric reflector to reduce optical loss in the cavity.
Note: Light beam emerging from the laser forms a vertical ellipse, even
though the lasing spot at the active-area facet ia horizontal ellipse.
• The cavity is approximately 250-500µm long, 5-15µm wide
& 0.1-0.2µm thick.
• These dimensions commonly are referred to as
Longitudinal , lateral & transverse dimensions of the cavity
respectively.
• As shown in figure 3, two flat, partially reflecting mirrors
are directed toward each other to enclose the Fabry-Perot
resonator cavity.

Figure 3: Two parallel light-reflecting mirrored

surfaces define a Fabry-Perot resonator cavity.
• The mirror facets are constructed by making two parallel
clefts along natural cleavage planes of the semiconductor
crystal.

• Mirrors establish a strong optical feedback in the

longitudinal direction.

• This feedback mechanism converts the device into an

oscillator (& hence light emitter) with a gain mechanism
that compensates for optical losses in the cavity at certain
resonant optical frequencies.

• The device will oscillate at those resonant frequencies for

which the gain is sufficient to overcome the losses.
• The sides of the cavity are formed by roughing the edges of
the device to reduce unwanted emissions in the lateral
directions.

• As the reflects back & forth within fabry-perot cavity, the

electric fields of the light interfere on successive round
trips.

• Those wavelengths that are integer multiples of cavity

length interfere constructively so that their amplitudes add
when they exit the device through the right hand facet.

• All other wavelengths interfere destructively & thus cancel

themselves out.
• The optical frequencies at which constructive interference
occurs are the resonant frequencies of the cavity.

• Spontaneously emitted photons that have wavelengths at

these resonant frequencies reinforce themselves after
multiple trips through the cavity so that the optical field
becomes very strong.

• The resonant wavelengths are called Longitudinal modes of

the cavity, because they resonate along the cavity.

• Resonant wavelengths( relative intensity) depends on

values of mirror reflectivity. That is, resonance becomes
sharper as the reflectivity increases.
2. Distributed feedback(DFB) Laser diode:
• The cleaved facets are not required for optical feedback.
• Figure 4 shows structure of typical DFB laser diode.

Figure 4: Structure of a distributed feedback laser diode

• The fabrication of this device is similar to Fabry-Perot type,
except that lasing action is obtained from Bragg reflectors
(gratings) or periodic variations of the refractive index ( called
distributed feedback corrugations) which is incorporated into
multilayer structure along the length of diode.
Modes of cavity:
• The optical radiation within the resonance cavity of a laser
diode sets up a pattern of electric & magnetic field lines
called modes of the cavity.

• These can separated into two independent sets:

Transverse Electric(TE) Modes
Transverse magnetic(TM) Modes

• Each set of modes can be described in terms of :

Longitudinal Modes
Lateral
Transverse hal-sinusoidal variations of EM fields along
the major axes of the cavity.
i) Longitudinal Modes:
• Related to the length(L) of the cavity.
• Determines the principle structure of frequency spectrum
of emitted optical radiation.
• Since L is much larger than lasing wavelength of 1µm, many
longitudinal modes can exists.

ii) Lateral modes:

• Lie in the plane of the pn junction.
• Depend on the side wall preparation & width of the cavity.
• Determine the shape of the lateral profile of the laser
beam.
iii) Transverse Modes:
Associated with EM field & beam profile in the direction
perpendicular to the plane of the pn junction.

• These modes are of great importance as they largely

determine the laser characteristics such as:
Radiation pattern (the transverse angular
distribution of the optical output power) &
The threshold current
LASER DIODE STRUCTURES & RADIATION PATTERNS:

• Basic requirement for efficient operation of laser diodes:

Transverse optical confinement & carrier
confinement between heterojunction layers,
 The current flow must be restricted laterally narrow
stripe along the length of the laser.

• Numerous novel methods are proposed to limit the no of

lateral modes so that lasing is confined to a single filament,
stabilizing the lateral gain & ensuring a relatively low
threshold current.
Basic optical confinement methods:

• Figure 1 shows 3 basic optical confinement methods used

for bounding laser light in the lateral direction.

Figure 1: a)Gain induced guide, electrons injected via metallic stripe contact alter the
index of refraction of active layer
b) Positive index waveguide has a higher refractive index in the central
portion of the active region
c) Negative index waveguide has a lower refractive index in the central
portion of the active region