Narrow linewidth Brillouin laser based on chalcogenide photonic chip

We present, to the best of our knowledge, the first demonstration of a narrow linewidth, waveguide-based Brillouin laser that is enabled by large Brillouin gain of a chalcogenide chip. The waveguides are equipped with vertical tapers for low-loss coupling. Due to optical feedback for the Stokes wave, the lasing threshold is reduced to 360 mW, which is five times lower than the calculated single-pass Brillouin threshold for the same waveguide. The slope efficiency of the laser is found to be 30%, and the linewidth of 100 kHz is measured using a self-heterodyne method. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America