Widely-tunable five-section slotted lasers

Wavelength tunable laser diodes are generally regarded as key components for future optical telecommunication systems. 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. 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.