Widely-tunable five-section slotted lasers

Wavelength tunable laser diodes are generally regarded as key components for future optical telecommunication systems [1]. Tunable lasers based on DBR gratings are the most typical tunable lasers which satisfy the system requirements. However, fabricating these lasers generally requires both high resolution processing and complex re-growth steps. To reduce the cost, our group has recently demonstrated wavelength tunable lasers based on the slots [2]. The laser structure is re-growth free, can be easily and cheaply fabricated and integrated. In this work we present improved results on this kind of tunable laser.