Liquid crystal mirror-based wavelength-tunable laser module with asynchronous mode cavity

Author

Mizutani, K. ; De Merlier, J. ; Sudo, S. ; Sato, K. ; Kudo, K.

Author_Institution

Syst. Devices Res. Labs., NEC Corp., Shiga

Volume

18

Issue

12

fYear

2006

fDate

6/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1299

Lastpage

1301

Abstract

We investigated experimentally the impact of the cavity spacing on the lasing mode stability of the external cavity wavelength-tunable laser (ECTL) with Fabry-Peacuterot etalon and liquid-crystal-based wavelength-tunable mirror. In the asynchronous mode cavity ECTL, the etalon assists in the suppression of the cavity modes at the neighboring transmission peaks of the lasing wavelength due to the misalignment to the etalon´s peak. Therefore, the ECTL with asynchronous mode cavity shows highly mode stable lasing operation. The fabricated ECTL module with optimized asynchronous mode cavity shows excellent lasing property of sidemode suppression ratio more than 59 dB and output power of over 14 dBm for a 45-nm tuning range

Keywords

Fabry-Perot interferometers; laser cavity resonators; laser mirrors; laser modes; laser stability; laser tuning; liquid crystal devices; modules; semiconductor lasers; Fabry-Perot etalon; asynchronous mode cavity; cavity spacing; external cavity wavelength-tunable laser; laser module; laser tuning; lasing mode stability; liquid crystal mirror; sidemode suppression ratio; Laser mode locking; Laser modes; Laser stability; Laser tuning; Liquid crystals; Mirrors; Optical fiber networks; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Tunable circuits and devices; External cavity; ITU grid; semiconductor lasers; tunable lasers; wavelength control; wavelength locker;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2006.876750

Filename

1637702