Low intensity saturation of an ISB transition by a mid-IR quantum cascade laser
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We demonstrate that absorption saturation of a mid-infrared intersubband transition can be engineered to occur at moderate light intensities of the order of 10–20 kW cm−2 and at room temperature. The structure consists of an array of metal–semiconductor–metal patches hosting a judiciously designed 253 nm thick GaAs/AlGaAs semiconductor heterostructure. At low incident intensity, the structure operates in the strong light–matter coupling regime and exhibits two absorption peaks at wavelengths close to 8.9 μm. Saturation appears as a transition to the weak coupling regime—and therefore, to a single-peaked absorption—when increasing the incident intensity. Comparison with a coupled mode theory model explains the data and permits to infer the relevant system parameters. When the pump laser is tuned at the cavity frequency, the reflectivity decreases with increasing incident intensity. When instead the laser is tuned at the polariton frequencies, the reflectivity non-linearly increases with increasing incident intensity. At those wavelengths, the system, therefore, mimics the behavior of a saturable absorption mirror in the mid-IR range, a technology that is currently missing.
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The adjoint method allows computing the objective gradient at a similar cost to computing the objective function itself.
“the adjoint method allows us to compute the objective gradient at a similar cost to computing the objective function itself, through the solving of an adjoint partial differential equation (PDE) [47].”
From Inverse Design of an All-Dielectric Nonlinear Polaritonic Metasurface. (2025) · cites this paper as [47]
The paper’s modeling passage (section labeled Abstract; page unavailable) describes temporal coupled-mode theory and analytical expressions for absorption and reflectivity. Searches for the adjoint method, objective gradients, comparable computation costs, and adjoint PDEs found no passage addressing the cited claim. (LLM, conf=0.76)
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Inverse Design of an All-Dielectric Nonlinear Polaritonic Metasurface.
Stich, S., Mohajan, J., de Ceglia, D., Carletti, L., Jung, H., Karl, N., Brener, I., Rodriguez, A. W., Belkin, M. A., & Sarma, R. (2025) · ACS Nano · doi:10.1021/acsnano.4c16934 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
- Authors
- Jeannin, M., Cosentino, E., Pirotta, S., Malerba, M., Biasiol, G., Manceau, J.-M., & Colombelli, R.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- AREA Science Park (IT)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Applied Physics Letters
- Publisher
- AIP Publishing
- Published
- 2023-06-12
- Volume
- 122
- Issue
- 24
- ISSN
- 0003-6951 (ISSN-L)
- 1077-3118
- OpenAlex
- W4380675194
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 1.86
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- hal.science
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- Applied Physics Letters (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- CINECA IRIS Institutional Research Information System (IRIS Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- H2020 Future and Emerging Technologies (737017)
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-19-CE24-0003, ANR-17-CE24-0016)
- HORIZON EUROPE Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions (748071)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Strong Light-Matter Interactions
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Semiconductor Quantum Structures and Devices
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research
- Keywords
- intersubband transitions, absorption saturation, quantum cascade lasers, mid-infrared, GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures, strong light-matter coupling, weak coupling, coupled mode theory, reflectivity, exciton-polaritons, room-temperature operation
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