On-chip silicon photonic wavelength control of optical fiber lasers

Tunable silicon microring filters are used to demonstrate CMOS-compatible on-chip wavelength control of Er(+) doped fiber-lasers. An onchip Ni-Cr micro-heater consuming up to 20 mW is capable of tuning the Si microring filter by 1.3 nm with a lasing linewidths narrower than 0.02 nm. This approach enables arbitrary multiple wavelength generation on a silicon chip. Possible applications include on-chip and chip-to-chip dense-wavelength division multiplexed communications and sensor interrogation.