Abstract

Single laser chips that emit multiple wavelengths simultaneously are interesting for a range of applications including wavelength division multiplexing, optical instrument testing and optical sensing. A number of approaches have been proposed to achieve multiple wavelength emission (MWE) by e.g. using multiple lasers, but they tend to be bulky and/or expensive. Some of these structures need thermal tuning of the emission wavelengths, which is relatively slow and requires precise control of the chip temperature. In this work we report on a novel integrated approach in order to obtain MWE from a single semiconductor laser based on on-chip filtered optical feedback. The layout of our device is shown in Fig.1(a). It consists of semiconductor ring laser (SRL), two arrayed waveguide gratings which are used to split/recombine light into 4 different wavelength channels, four semiconductor optical amplifier gates and passive and active waveguides to connect these different components.

© 2013 IEEE