Jeffress Memorial Trust Research Grant in 2001

Sukow has been awarded a Jeffress Memorial Trust Research Grant  for his project, "High-Frequency Oscillations from a Semiconductor Laser with Two Delayed Optical Feedbacks."

Diode lasers are important in technology because of their small size, high power, and low price. They are also highly susceptible to optical feedback, which commonly arises from reflections from a compact disk or from fiber optic interfaces. Such feedback can cause the laser's intensity to fluctuate erratically, which usually decreases its performance.  His research addresses two general questions: what is the origin of the instabilities that arise, and what can be done to either suppress or take advantage of them?

The Jeffress grant supports a fundamental study of one particularly interesting behavior, known as mixed-mode dynamics. In this case, the laser generates light of two different wavelengths simultaneously. These two signals acting in concert cause the laser's total output power to oscillate at high frequency. These oscillations may be useful and tunable to some extent, and so mixed-mode dynamics may represent a novel, all-optical source of microwave frequencies.