Abstract
We propose a new class of widely tunable semiconductor laser structures that use microring resonators as either wavelength selective reflectors or as inter-cavity filters. Microring resonator based lasers can have tuning bandwidths reaching 50 nanometers, and can have side mode suppression ratios better than 30 dB over the entire tuning bandwidth. The tuning bandwidth is found to be limited by the loss in the microring resonators. We compare the performance of microring resonator based lasers to grating based widely tunable lasers and show that the performance of the former is much more sensitive to loss. We present results from numerical simulations and analytical models, and give designs rules for fabricating microring resonator based tunable lasers with the existing technologies.
© 2002 Optical Society of America
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