Tunable lasers from research to volume production — a personal view

Abstract

This talk is a personal account of the author's experience from R&D on tunable lasers and the efforts of getting the lasers out of the research lab and into commercial volume production. The story begins with early research in Sweden and a very formative year as a guest researcher in Japan. After specialising in tunable lasers there were many efforts to get industry interested. Eventually the first tunable laser start-up company Altitun was founded in 1996. The main product was the widely tunable GCSR laser with related wavelength control that allowed access to any wavelength channel within the 40nm wide C-band. Rapid growth followed, and after being bought by a major industrial company, Altitun was closed down in the IT crash of 2002. A second start-up company, Syntune, was built on the remains of the first. Syntune brought to market widely tunable transmitters and transceivers based on photonic integrated circuits by combining the novel MGY widely tunable laser design with modulators, amplifiers and other components, all monolithically integrated on a single InP chip. This company has changed owners and name several times and after a spectacular series of ups and downs it is now a major supplier of tunable lasers, tunable transceiver modules and related photonics components. All chip production is still done in the same Swedish fab, albeit a lot expanded, as the first company Altitun.