Abstract

Digital supermode DBR (DS-DBR) lasers are an attractive light source for WDM transmitter systems as they show continuous tuning capability in the full C-band and are compatible with monolithic integration [1]. It is thus desirable to place an array of DS-DBR lasers within a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) for multi-channel operation. However, thermal crosstalk in such a PIC can pose a severe problem that degrades laser performance and limits integration density. It has been shown in [2] that thermal effects between sections of a single SG-DBR laser leads to mirror detuning and output wavelength shift whereas a similar observation was made for a single DS-DBR lasers in [3]. In this paper, we investigate the thermal crosstalk in an array of three DS-DBR lasers and show that simultaneous full C-band tuning is still possible even in presence of strong thermal crosstalk.

© 2015 IEEE