Dynamic hysteresis in a coherent high-β nanolaser

The quest for an integrated light source that promises high energy efficiency and a fast modulation for high-performance photonic circuits has led to the development of room-temperature telecom-wavelength nanoscale lasers with a high spontaneous emission factor a. The coherence characterization of this type of laser using the conventional measurement of output light intensity versus input pump intensity is inherently difficult due to the diminishing kink in the measurement curve. We demonstrate that the transition from incoherent to coherent emission of a high-a pulse-pump metallo-dielectric nanolaser can be determined by examining the width of a second-order intensity correlation peak that shrinks below and broadens above the threshold. Our photon fluctuation study, the first ever reported for this type of nanolaser, confirms the validity of this measurement technique. Additionally, we show that the width variation above the threshold results from the delayed threshold phenomenon, providing the first observation of dynamical hysteresis in a nanolaser. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America