Thermally widely tunable laser diodes with distributed feedback

A thermally widely tunable buried heterostructure laser diode with distributed feedback (DFB) is demonstrated. This device requires only two tuning currents for wide quasicontinuous wavelength tuning, thereby facilitating easy and fast device calibration and control. Furthermore, being based on regular DFB laser fabrication technology, it is readily manufacturable. By using window structures instead of cleaved facets plus antireflection coatings, a regular tuning behavior has been achieved for a DFB-like widely tunable laser diode with only two tuning currents. The laser diode covers the wavelength range between 1552 and 1602 nm. Requiring side-mode suppression ratio and output power above 30 dB and 10 mW, respectively, a wavelength range of 43 nm is accessible.