A Tunable Semiconductor Lased Based on Etched Slots Suitable for Monolithic Integration

Abstract

Widely tunable semiconductor lasers will play a critical part in future technologies. Tunable lasers are rapidly replacing fixed wavelength lasers in dense wavelength division multiplexing DWDM optical communications. The performance specifications of tunable lasers are the same as fixed wavelength specifications plus additional specifications that include: wavelength tuning range; wavelength switching speed; and minimum wavelength spacing. Tunable lasers diodes (TLD) have been used in optical networks for some time now starting with devices with small wavelength coverage and moving towards full band coverage. Wavelength-agile networks are also simplified with tunable lasers. Reconfigurable optical add–drop multiplexers (ROADMs) and wavelength-based routing enable service providers to offer differentiated services, meet the ever-increasing demand for bandwidth and deliver all-optical networking. Tunable lasers are key to addressing this growing need to reconfigure networks remotely. The use of widely tunable lasers helps maximize existing network resources. The ability to dynamically provision bandwidth provides the ability to optimize the network configuration to meet demand. Widely tunable lasers move traffic from overcrowded channels to unused channels and are becoming essential for the network architecture. Future DWDM networks will make more use of wavelength converters to increase network flexibility. Wavelength converters, such as, optical-electronic-optical (OEO) converters with the ability to detect a high data rate signal on any input wavelength channel and to convert to any output wavelength channel, will use tunable lasers. Future uses for tunable lasers will also include packet based selection of the wavelength on which the packet is to be transmitted. The tunable laser switching speed for these applications will be of the order of micro-seconds or longer. They will typically need to be widely tunable, i.e. tunable over a full C or L band and should be tunable to the 50 GHz channel spacing. In some UDWDM applications, channel spacing of 25 GHz and eventually as close as 12.5 GHz will be required. Tunable lasers will also be used as a means to reduce costs as sparing lasers in wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) systems. New approaches to data transmission such as coherent WDM (CoWDM (Healy, Garcia Gunning et al. 2007)) require discrete tuning between particular wavelength channels on a grid. There is additionally an urgent need to integrate semiconductor lasers with other optical components such as amplifiers,