MEMS-based frequency modulation of fiber ring laser

Fiber lasers are gaining wide attention nowadays due to their high stability, high reliability, low cost and compactness. Frequency modulation of the laser system has many applications such as wavelength tuning, active mode locking, generation of optical frequency combs and fiber sensors in general. In this work, we report frequency modulation of fiber ring laser system using transmission-type corner cube in-plane MEMS phase modulator fabricated by DRIE technology on an SOI substrate. The fiber-coupled MEMS-based phase modulator is inserted in a multi-longitudinal mode fiber ring laser, which has a free spectral range of 345 kHz. By varying the applied voltage on the MEMS device, a wide range of the frequency modulation index can be achieved.