What is "quantum cascade laser"

alt. A laser that operates by analogy with an electronic waterfall, with electrons cascading down a series of small steps emitting a photon at each step. n. A laser that operates by analogy with an electronic waterfall, with electrons cascading down a series of small steps emitting a photon at each step.

Quantum cascade lasers (QCLs) are semiconductor lasers that emit in the mid- to far- infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum and were first demonstrated by Jerome Faist, Federico Capasso, Deborah Sivco, Carlo Sirtori, Albert Hutchinson, and Alfred Cho at Bell Laboratories in 1994.

Unlike typical interband semiconductor lasers that emit electromagnetic radiation through the recombination of electron–hole pairs across the material band gap, QCLs are unipolar and laser emission is achieved through the use of intersubband transitions in a repeated stack of semiconductor multiple quantum well heterostructures, an idea first proposed in the paper "Possibility of amplification of electromagnetic waves in a semiconductor with a superlattice" by R.F. Kazarinov and R.A. Suris in 1971.