Digital wavelength selected DBR laser

摘要

Widely tunable monolithic InP lasers can, in principle, cover one or other of the Er-doped fibre amplifier windows. These windows span wavelength ranges of around 40-50nm. However, the change in refractive index that can be achieved by current injection into a grating section is limited to about 1-2% corresponding to around 10-20nm in wavelength, so some further mechanism is required to extend the tuning range. In this paper, we present a new multi-section, digital supermode DBR laser (DS-DBR) that can be controlled in a simple, quasi-digital manner. The wavelength is coarsely selected by applying current to one of the front contacts to form an enhanced reflection peak and select a sub-band of the total tuning range. Current applied to the rear grating contact allows tuning within that range and a phase section allows fine tuning control. By selecting front contacts in turn, the full tuning range of the device can be accessed. We will present an overview of the device together with some simple modelling to show how the device will perform. This will be followed by a brief description of the fabrication and a comprehensive set of experimental results including RIN and linewidth measurements.