A 1550 nm DWDM planar external cavity laser is demonstrated to provide low phase / frequency noise and narrow linewidth. The cavity includes a semiconductor gain chip and a planar lightwave circuit waveguide with Bragg grating, packaged in a 14-pin butterfly package. The laser shows linewidth < 30 kHz and phase/frequency noise comparable with that of long cavity fiber lasers. Performance is suitable for various fiber optic sensing systems, including interferometric sensing in Oil and Gas, military/security and other applications, currently served mostly by costly and less reliable laser sources.

Date Published: 16 May 2008
PDF: 4 pages
Proc. SPIE 7004, 19th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, 700457 (16 May 2008); doi: 10.1117/12.786226

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7004:
19th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors
David Sampson; Stephen Collins; Kyunghwan Oh; Ryozo Yamauchi, Editor(s)