Rectangular Ring Lasers Based on Total Reflection Mirrors and Three Waveguide Couplers

Author

Kim, Doo Gun ; Shin, Jae Hyuk ; Ozturk, Cem ; Yi, Jong Chang ; Chung, Youngchul ; Dagli, Nadir

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., Santa Barbara, CA

Volume

19

Issue

5

fYear

2007

fDate

3/1/2007 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

306

Lastpage

308

Abstract

Novel rectangular ring lasers containing active and passive sections are fabricated and characterized. The rectangular laser cavity is formed using four low-loss total internal reflection (TIR) mirrors and an output coupler made out of passive three coupled waveguides. The fabrication process is exactly the same as for other active and passive devices except for one deep etch step for TIR mirror fabrication. Two different lasers having active section lengths of 250 and 350 mum and total cavity lengths of 580 and 780 mum are fabricated. For both devices, lasing thresholds of 38mA are obtained at room temperature and under continuous-wave operation. Lasing is predominantly single-mode with a sidemode suppression ratio better than 20 dB. The power loss of a single TIR mirror is also determined to be about 0.5 dB. Such low-loss TIR mirrors enabled lasers with very small footprints

Keywords

laser mirrors; optical couplers; optical fabrication; optical losses; ring lasers; 250 mum; 350 mum; 580 mum; 780 mum; power loss; rectangular laser cavity; ring lasers; sidemode suppression ratio; single-mode lasing; total internal reflection mirrors; waveguide couplers; Couplers; Etching; Mirrors; Optical coupling; Optical device fabrication; Optical reflection; Rectangular waveguides; Ring lasers; Temperature; Waveguide lasers; Rectangular ring laser; microring resonator; three waveguide coupler; total internal reflection (TIR) mirror;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2007.891587

Filename

4116735