Electrically pumped topological laser with valley edge modes

Semiconductor devices have become indispensable for generating electromagnetic radiation in everyday applications. Visible and infrared diode lasers are at the core of information technology, and at the other end of the spectrum, microwave and radio-frequency emitters enable wireless communications. But the terahertz region (1-10 THz; 1 THz = 10(12) Hz) between these ranges has remained largely underdeveloped, despite the identification of various possible applications--for example, chemical detection, astronomy and medical imaging. Progress in this area has been hampered by the lack of compact, low-consumption, solid-state terahertz sources. Here we report a monolithic terahertz injection laser that is based on interminiband transitions in the conduction band of a semiconductor (GaAs/AlGaAs) heterostructure. The prototype demonstrated emits a single mode at 4.4 THz, and already shows high output powers of more than 2 mW with low threshold current densities of about a few hundred A cm(-2) up to 50 K. These results are very promising for extending the present laser concept to continuous-wave and high-temperature operation, which would lead to implementation in practical photonic systems.

Topological insulators are phases of matter characterized by topological edge states that propagate in a unidirectional manner that is robust to imperfections and disorder. These attributes make topological insulator systems ideal candidates for enabling applications in quantum computation and spintronics. Here, we propose a fundamentally new concept that exploits topological effects in a unique way: the topological insulator laser. These are lasers whose lasing mode exhibits topologically-protected transport without magnetic fields. The underlying topological properties lead to a highly efficient laser, robust to defects and disorder, with single mode lasing even at very high gain values. The topological insulator laser alters current understanding of the interplay between disorder and lasing, and at the same time opens exciting possibilities in topological physics, such as topologically-protected transport in systems with gain. On the technological side, the topological insulator laser provides a route to make many semiconductor lasers to operate as a single-mode high-power laser, while coupled efficiently into an output port.