Open AccessElectrically tunable lasers made from electro-optically active photonics band gap materials
Author(s) -
Haiping Yu,
Benjamin Y. Tang,
Jianhui Li,
Le Li
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/opex.13.007243
Subject(s) - materials science , optics , laser , optoelectronics , electric field , photonic crystal , photonics , tunable laser , wavelength , physics , quantum mechanics
External cavity-free and electrically tunable laser made from photonics band gap (PBG) materials with electrically tunable stop band is reported. The tunable PBG materials are developed from a family of novel cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) with electrically variable pitch that adopts a non-constant distribution in space across the CLC film. The CLC exhibits a distributed feedback cavity whose resonant frequency can be electrically varied over a spectral range wider than 300 nm. Under an optical pumping and subject to a variable electric field, a tunable laser has been demonstrated in experiment that shows a wavelength tuning over 33 nm.