Measurement of the Thermally-Induced Wavelength Drift Associated with Channel Switching in Tunable Lasers

摘要

I propose a measurement technique for determining the thermally-induced wavelength drift associated with channel switching in tunable lasers. Using a tunable optical filter as frequency discriminator and a photodiode, the wavelength drift is electrically converted into a measurable voltage, while the laser is periodically switched between two channels. 1 account both for the filter nonlinearity and the laser output power variations during the measurement. I used this technique to evaluate the wavelength drift for a SG-DBR laser, but the method could be easily used for any other type of tunable lasers exploiting the plasma effect.