Record 17 µm quantum cascade laser

Record 17 µm quantum cascade laser opens new spectroscopic frontiers

Researchers from the MMTF team at LPL, in collaboration with R. Teissier (University of Montpellier) and M. R. Tarbutt (Imperial College London), have demonstrated and characterized a room-temperature continuous-wave quantum cascade laser operating at the record wavelength of 17 µm (580 cm-1), a spectral region until now largely out of reach for laser technologies.

This breakthrough enabled the first absorption spectroscopy of nitrous oxide (N₂O) at this wavelength, while the laser’s frequency noise and linewidth were also precisely measured.

Such advances open new opportunities in frequency metrology and fundamental physics, from probing vibrational levels in laser-cooled ultracold diatomic molecules to performing high-precision spectroscopy on increasingly complex molecular systems.

These results are reported in Laser & Photonics Reviews (arXiv: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.16460) and New Journal of Physics.