Open AccessIII–V/Si Vernier-Ring Comb Lasers (VRCLs)
Author(s) -
Jock Bovington,
Xuezhe Zheng,
Stevan S. Djordjevic,
Ivan Shubin,
Jin-Hyoung Lee,
Shiyun Lin,
Ying Luo,
Jin Yao,
Daniel Y. Lee,
Kannan Raj,
John E. Cunningham,
Ashok V. Krishnamoorthy
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
ieee journal of selected topics in quantum electronics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.131
H-Index - 159
eISSN - 1558-4542
pISSN - 1077-260X
DOI - 10.1109/jstqe.2016.2616344
Subject(s) - engineered materials, dielectrics and plasmas , photonics and electrooptics
We present a novel reconfigurable comb laser design that enables channel sparing, and demonstrate its functionality in a III-V/Si external cavity configuration. The laser is comprised of a single shared tunable Si ring mirror Vernier-paired with an array of tunable channel ring filters each coupled to their respective reflective semiconductor optical amplifier. This comb laser is not only tunable, capable of shifting all comb lines together, but it is flexible, able to change the spacing of channels in the comb within a fixed grid defined by the ring mirror. This flexibility results in features not previously demonstrated in a comb, such as mixed channel spacing and channel sparing capability. This is a practical candidate for flexible, scalable wavelength division multiplexed links targeting the next generation of data centers for the cloud.