Nanowerk  June 26, 2024 Ti:sapphire lasers are unmatched in bandwidth and tuning range, yet their use is restricted because of their large size, cost and need for high optical pump powers. An international team of researchers (USA – Stanford University, Belgium) demonstrated a monocrystalline titanium:sapphire-on-insulator (Ti:SaOI) photonics platform that enabled dramatic miniaturization, cost reduction and scalability of Ti:sapphire technology. Through the fabrication of low-loss whispering-gallery-mode resonators, they realized a Ti:sapphire laser operating with an ultralow, sub-milliwatt lasing threshold; through orders-of-magnitude improvement in mode confinement in Ti:SaOI waveguides, they realized an integrated solid-state optical amplifier operating below 1 μm. They amplified distortion-free […]