Study of injection-locking phenomenon using MEMS tunable laser

This paper reports our recent work that exploits the MEMS technology for the physical study of the laser injection-locking phenomenon, which is of great importance for atomic clock, all-optical networks and coherent communications. A MEMS injection locking laser (ILL) device has been developed to provide an experiment platform for physical and application studies. It employs a MEMS tunable laser as a master laser to lock a Fabry-Perot (FP) multimode laser; both are hybridly integrated with the functional MEMS structures onto a single chip. Superior performance has been achieved in terms of wavelength tuning range, locking quality and optical response. As an example of the device capability, optically-controlled optical switching has been successfully demonstrated, up to 50 MHz (potentially 10 GHz). A general rate equation has also been developed to explain the phenomena of the wave mixing and the optical switching.