量子级联激光器具有效率高、体积小、功耗低、波长可大范围选取的特点, 已经被广泛应用于定向红外对抗系统、自由空间光通信和痕量气体传感等领域。回顾了量子级联激光器近20年的进展。首先总结了量子级联激光器的总体发展历程和发光原理; 接着介绍了主要用于定向红外对抗的大功率量子级联激光器的几种典型有源区结构设计, 然后讨论了气体传感用的单模分布反馈量子级联激光器; 接着又论述了单片集成高亮度量子级联激光器相干阵列的研究情况; 此外, 还介绍了自由空间通信用的量子级联激光器的发展情况; 最后, 描述了近些年才出现中红外量子级联激光器光频梳的研究进展。

Quantum cascade laser(QCL) has been widely applied in directed infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) system, free space optical communication(FSOC) and gas sensing since it has advantages of high efficiency, compact volume, low electrical consumption and wide wavelength tunability. In this paper, the progress in QCLs made over the last 20 years was reviewed. The principle of emission and overview of QCL was demonstrated in the introduction. The design of active region for high output power QCL aiming at DIRCM was described in the first part. In the second part, the progress in distributed-feedback QCLs for gas sensing was introduced. In the third part, the research of high brightness QCL phase locked arrays was demonstrated. In the fourth part, the high speed QCL for FSOC was discussed. Finally, a new device, QCL frequency comb was introduced for its crucial influence on mid-infrared frequency comb.