Laser With Controlled Polarization: Innovation Opens Door To Wide Range Of Applications In Photonics And Communications

To achieve the results, the researchers sculpted a metallic structure, dubbed a plasmonic polarizer directly on the facet of a quantum cascade (QC) laser. The QC laser emitted at a wavelength of ten microns (in the invisible part of the spectrum known as the mid-infrared where the atmosphere is transparent). The team was able to control the state of polarization by generating both linearly polarized light along an arbitrary direction and circularly polarized light.