Patent 7266279 was granted and assigned to Hrl Laboratories, Llc on September, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An apparatus and methods for an optically pumped laser that has a cascade of light-emitting interband transitions are disclosed. The apparatus disclosed contains multistep interband cascade regions able to generate a plurality of photons for a pump photon absorbed from an optical pump source. The methods disclosed teach how to produce a plurality of photons for a pump photon absorbed from an optical pump source.