Optical beam steering by using tunable, narrow-linewidth butt-coupled hybrid lasers in a silicon nitride photonics platform
Yeyu Zhu, Siwei Zeng, Lin Zhu
Abstract
Chip-scale, tunable narrow-linewidth hybrid integrated diode lasers based on quantum-dot RSOAs at 1.3 μm are demonstrated through butt-coupling to a silicon nitride photonic integrated circuit. The hybrid laser linewidth is around 85 kHz, and the tuning range is around 47 nm. Then, a fully integrated beam steerer is demonstrated by combining the tunable diode laser with a waveguide surface grating. Our system can provide beam steering of 4.1° in one direction by tuning the wavelength of the hybrid laser. Besides, a wavelength-tunable triple-band hybrid laser system working at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m1"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m2"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1.3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline" id="m3"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo form="prefix">∼</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1.55</mml:mn> <mml:mtext> </mml:mtext> <mml:mi>μm</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> bands is demonstrated for wide-angle beam steering in a single chip.