Multi-Channel Wide Range Athermal Operationof Slotted Surface Grating Lasers for athermalDWDM

Semiconductor lasers can be athermalised, which allows them to maintain their lasing wavelength with varying ambient temperature. Athermalisation can be achieved with careful control of injection currents into the laser diode. This allows the removal of a thermoelectric cooler and hence enables athermal wavelength division multiplexing. In this study, a high-order surface grating laser is operated athermally on eight, 100 GHz spaced channels from the ITU dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) grid, achieving a wavelength stability of ±0.003nm/±0.4 GHz from 20 to 72–108°C depending on the channel. High side mode suppression ratios(>40 dB) and output powers(>+10 dBm) are also observed for a majority of the tuning ranges. Additionally, operation on six, 12.5 GHz spaced channels is also demonstrated with similar performance.