Wavelength-controlled external-cavity laser with a silicon photonic crystal resonant reflector

This work was partially funded by the EPSRC, Scottish Enterprise, and the European Research Council under the Starting Grant 337508.We report the experimental demonstration of an alternative design of external-cavity hybrid lasers consisting of a III-V Semiconductor Optical Amplifier with fiber reflector and a Photonic Crystal (PhC) based resonant reflector on SOI. The Silicon reflector comprises a polymer (SU8) bus waveguide vertically coupled to a PhC cavity and provides a wavelength-selective optical feedback to the laser cavity. This device exhibits milliwatt-level output power and sidemode suppression ratio of more than 25 dB.Publisher PD