C-band swept wavelength erbium-doped fiber laser with a high-Q tunable interior-ridge silicon microring cavity.

Abstract

We demonstrate swept-wavelength operation of an erbium-doped fiber laser using a tunable silicon microring cavity. The microring cavity is designed to have 35 nm free spectral range, a high Q of 1.5 × 105, and low insertion loss of <0.05 dB. The resonance wavelength of the cavity is tuned efficiently (8.1μW/GHz) and rapidly (τr,f~2.2μs) using an embedded Si heater. The laser achieves single-mode continuous-wave emission over the C-band (1530 nm-to-1560 nm). A mean swept-wavelength rate of 22,600 nm/s or 3106 THz/s is demonstrated within 1532 nm-to-1542 nm wavelength range. Its linewidth is measured to be 16 kHz using loss-compensated circulating delayed self-heterodyne detection.