A tunable laser has a first mirror, a second mirror, a gain medium, and a directional coupler. The first mirror and the second mirror form an optical resonator. The gain medium and the directional coupler are, at least partially, in an optical path of the optical resonator. The first mirror and the second mirror comprise binary super gratings. Both the first mirror and the second mirror have high reflectivity. The directional coupler provides an output coupler for the tunable laser.

The laser assembly includes a semiconductor with an active semiconductor region, a controllable oscillator for generating a periodic electric signal that is applied to the semiconductor laser to generate a surface acoustic wave in or near the active semiconductor region such that a diffraction grating structure is created in or near the active semiconductor region by the surface acoustic wave, an emission wavelength of the active semiconductor region being determined by a periodicity of the diffraction grating structure, wherein the controllable oscillator is configured to set a frequency of the periodic electric signal in accordance with a control signal, and a control circuit for generating the control signal for the controllable oscillator in such a manner that a shift of the emission wavelength from heating of the active semiconductor region during emission of the optical signal is at least partially compensated by an opposite shift of the emission wavelength from a change of the periodicity of the diffraction grating structure in or near the active semiconductor region.

A terahertz radiator is based on coherent Smith-Purcell radiation amplified by stimulation. The terahertz radiator includes an electron emission source configured to emit electron beams and a pumping source configured to emit pumping signals. The pumping signal interacts with a primary grating structure to obtain preliminarily bunched electrons. The preliminarily bunched electrons interact with the primary grating structure to generate coherent Smith-Purcell radiation. The coherent Smith-Purcell radiation and the pumping signals vertically resonate in a primary resonant cavity structure, so that the electron bunching density is increased, and in turn, the coherent Smith-Purcell radiation is enhanced. A positive feedback process is formed by free electrons and the coherent Smith-Purcell radiation, and the coherent Smith-Purcell radiation amplified by stimulation and periodic bunched electron bunches are obtained. The terahertz radiator can be used to realize a stimulated amplification phenomenon under the conditions of small current and large beam spots.

A DFB laser having a reduced fill factor and reduced loss. A plurality of spaced-apart contact openings are etched into a dielectric layer situated on top of a laser ridge having a DFB grating layer so that electrical contact between the metal top contact layer and the DFB gratings is made only in the etched openings, since all other areas of the top surface of the DFB-grated laser ridge are insulated from the metal contact layer by the dielectric. The size and shape of contact openings and their spacing are configured so that the ratio of the total area of the openings to the total area of the laser ridge provides a fill factor of less than 100%.

A semiconductor laser includes: a waveguide structure including, in order, a first semiconductor layer, an active layer, and a second semiconductor layer; a p-type semiconductor layer disposed in contact with one side surface of the active layer; an n-type semiconductor layer disposed in contact with the other side surface of the active layer; a waveguide layer optically coupled to the active layer in a waveguide direction; a first diffraction grating disposed on either one of a lower surface of the first semiconductor layer, an upper surface of the second semiconductor layer, and a side surface of the active layer; a second diffraction grating disposed on either one of a lower surface and an upper surface of the waveguide layer; and a refractive index control unit for changing a refractive index of the waveguide layer. The semiconductor laser can achieve a good high-temperature operation with a simple configuration.

Laser apparatus and control methods providing mode hop-free tuning of the lasing wavelength (frequency) over a broad region of, and possibly, the entire gain bandwidth of the gain medium. Broadly, the apparatus and method incorporate opposite dispersion to compensate the wavelength-dependent group delay and group-velocity dispersion inside a laser cavity for broadband mode-hop free wavelength tuning.