Tunable buried ridge stripe sampled grating distributed Bragg reflector lasers utilizing quantum well intermixing

Abstract

We apply quantum well intermixing (QWI) to the sampled grating distributed Bragg reflector (SGDBR) laser to demonstrate tuning by current injection in the QWI material and to improve device design. Specifically, by utilizing a centered quantum well active region the mode overlap with the quantum wells is increased by a factor of 1.5 over the offset quantum well case, where the quantum wells are positioned above the waveguide. In this way the modal gain is increased, improving the characteristics of the laser. In order to create a non-absorbing waveguide, QWI has been applied to the back and front mirror to blue shift the quantum well band edge.