Short ring cavity swept source based on a highly reflective chirped FBG

An optical akinetic swept source (AKSS) at 1060 nm, comprising a 5 m length fiber ring cavity, a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as gain medium, and a 98% reflective chirped fiber Bragg grating as a dispersive element, is described. Active mode-locking was achieved by directly modulating the current of the SOA with sinusoidal signal of frequency equal to 10 times and 20 times the cavity resonance frequency. In the static regime, linewidths as narrow as 60 pm and a tuning bandwidth of 30 nm were achieved, while a 2 mW output power, without any optical booster, was measured dynamically at a sweep speed of 100 kHz. The axial range of the AKSS was evaluated by scanning through the channeled spectrum of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. © 2015, The Author(s)