Ultra-Coherent Semiconductor Laser Technology

In this STTR program, technology created in Professor John Bowers research group at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) to fabricate silicon photonics based integrated lasers, including wafer bonded III-V gain elements and ultra-low loss silicon nitride waveguides and microresonators, will be utilized to develop ultra-coherent integrated laser devices that are widely tunable. Novel laser designs developed by Morton Photonics, taking advantage of ultra-low loss microresonator based reflectors will be fabricated using the novel silicon photonics platform developed by UCSB. The Integrated Coherent Tunable Laser (ICTL) will provide an ultra-coherent output, also with ultra-low relative intensity noise (RIN), a high output power, and be fully tunable across the 1530nm to 1565nm wavelength range (C-Band). The ICTL product developed through this program will take advantage of CMOS foundries and the tremendous cost and scaling advantages of silicon processing technology, leading to a high volume low cost product, with low size, weight and power (SWaP).