Monolithic tunable diode lasers

摘要

After over two decades of exploration, tunable diode lasers arenbeginning to find significant applications, driven largely by the hugendemand for bandwidth that is guiding many developments in the opticalnfiber communication business today. In the paper, some of the historynand key developments that have led to the technologies available todaynare reviewed from the perspective of the author. After discussion ofnsome of the early work, the focus shifts to widely tunable diode lasers,nwhich would appear to be key enablers for future densenwavelength-division multiplexing and optical switching and networkingnsystems. The distinguishing characteristics of the current technologicalnalternatives are summarized