Pilot Photonics has announced the availability of a new widely tunable laser module. According to the firm, it is the only commercially available tunable laser that offers the elusive combination of nanosecond switching and narrow linewidth.
Widely tunable semiconductor lasers can typically offer narrow linewidth, or fast tuning, but not both. In optical fibre sensing systems, electronically tunable lasers have traditionally been used for their fast tunability over a wide tuning range which is achieved using a current injection tuning mechanism.
However, these lasers exhibit linewidths that are unsuitable for demanding phase sensitive applications such as coherent optical communication and frequency-modulated continuous-wave lidar. Changing to a thermal tuning mechanism reduces the linewidth, but at the expense of switching speed which renders the laser unsuitable for some of these applications.
The new laser is based on a monolithic InP chip fabricated on an active-passive platform. Electro-optic tuning with reverse-voltage bias of tuning sections allows mA-order dark currents and facilitates nanosecond switching speeds with low power dissipation. It offers more than 30nm of wavelength tuning range in either the C-band or the O-band, and a linewidth of 150kHz. Currently available in a 14-pin butterfly package or integrated into an OEM or laboratory instrument form-factor module, the company is also developing a nano-iTLA module for high volume applications.