Relaxation of the alignment tolerances of a 1.55-μm extended-cavity semiconductor laser by use of an intracavity photorefractive filter

Commercial grating-tuned single-mode extended-cavity semiconductor lasers (ECLDs) can be tuned over 100 nm near 1.55 mum. This continuous tuning with no mode hopping requires delicate factory adjustments and high mechanical stability so that the wavelength precision is kept as high as possible and the mismatch between the lasing wavelength and the wavelength of minimum loss remains as small as possible. The addition of a photorefractive crystal inside the cavity creates an adaptive spectral filter that decreases the loss of the lasing mode and thus enhances its stability. For what is to our knowledge the first time, we demonstrate the extension of the available wavelength-mismatch range without mode hopping by the addition of a CdTe photorefractive crystal inside the cavity of a single-mode grating-tuned ECLD. (C) 2001 Optical Society of America.