A semiconductor optical device includes an SOI substrate having a waveguide of silicon, and at least one gain region of a group III-V compound semiconductor having an optical gain bonded to the SOI substrate. The waveguide has a bent portion and multiple linear portions extending linearly and connected to each other through the bent portion. The gain region is disposed on each of the multiple linear portions.

A tunable laser includes a reflective semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA), a grating codirectional coupler, and a reflective microring resonator. The grating codirectional coupler and the reflective microring resonator are both formed on a silicon base. An anti-reflection film is disposed on a first end surface of the reflective SOA, and the first end surface is an end surface, coupled to a first waveguide of the grating codirectional coupler, of the reflective SOA. A second waveguide of the grating codirectional coupler is coupled to the first waveguide, a first grating is disposed on the first waveguide, a second grating disposed opposite to the first grating is disposed on the second waveguide, and the first grating and the second grating constitute a narrow-band pass filter. The second waveguide is connected to the reflective microring resonator.

A semiconductor device includes: a base including a base surface; a mesa protruding from the base surface in a first direction intersecting the base surface, the mesa including a top surface and two side surfaces on both sides of the top surface, and extending along the base surface; and an electric resistor including a top wall provided on the top surface and a side wall provided on at least one of the two side surfaces, the electric resistor being configured such that a current flows in an extending direction of the mesa.

A novel, monolithically integrated mid-IR optical phased array (OPA) structure which eliminates the wafer bonding process to achieve highly efficient surface emitting optical beam steering in two dimensions is disclosed. Since solar energy is about 15-20 times smaller than that at 1.55 um, mid-IR is more favorable for the atmospheric transmission due to lower solar radiance backgrounds. For the beam steering, thermo-optic phase shifting is used for azimuthal plane beam steering and laser wavelength tuning is used for elevation plane beam steering. The OPA structure disclosed comprises a wavelength- tunable a QCL, a 1×32 splitter, thermo-optic phase-shifters, and sub-wavelength grating emitters. The disclosed OPA provides a low-cost, low-loss, low-power consumption, robust, small footprint, apparatus that may be used with expendable UAV swarms. A LiDAR may be created by monolithically integrating a QCD with the apparatus. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

An optical waveguide structure includes a lower cladding layer positioned on a substrate; an optical guide layer positioned on the lower cladding layer; an upper cladding layer positioned on the optical guide layer; and a heater positioned on the upper cladding layer. The lower cladding layer, the optical guide layer, and the upper cladding layer constitute a mesa structure. The optical guide layer has a lower thermal conductivity than the upper cladding layer. An equation “W.sub.wg≤W.sub.mesa≤3×W.sub.wg” is satisfied, wherein W.sub.mesa represents a mesa width of the mesa structure, and W.sub.wg represents a width of the optical guide layer. The optical guide layer occupies one-third or more of the mesa width in a width direction of the mesa structure.

A wavelength tunable light source includes: a common wavelength filter that has periodic transmission peak wavelengths or reflection peak wavelengths and is commonly used for a plurality of channels; a wavelength tunable filter that is coupled to the common wavelength filter and has a one-input and multiple-output configuration which has a plurality of output ports, and that has a plurality of transmission peak wavelengths corresponding to the plurality of channels at the plurality of output ports; and a plurality of gain media optically coupled to the plurality of output ports of the wavelength tunable filter, wherein a plurality of laser cavities that perform laser oscillation at a plurality of different wavelengths are formed between the common wavelength filter and the plurality of gain media.

An external cavity diode laser has been developed to achieve a linear frequency chirp over a broad bandwidth using a silicon photonic filter chip as the external cavity. By appropriately chirping the cavity phase using the gain chip and/or a cavity phase modulator on the silicon photonic chip along with simultaneously varying the filter resonance, approximately linear frequency chirping can be accomplished for at least 50 GHz, although desirable structures with useful lesser chirp bandwidths are also described. With careful control of the chip design, it is possible to achieve predictable behavior of mode jumps along with large scannable ranges within a mode, which allows for stitching together segments of linear chirp through a mode jump to provide for very large chirp bandwidths greater than 1 THz.

A novel, monolithically integrated mid-IR optical phased array (OPA) structure which eliminates the wafer bonding process to achieve highly efficient surface emitting optical beam steering in two dimensions is disclosed. Since solar energy is about 15-20 times smaller than that at 1.55 μm, mid-IR is more favorable for the atmospheric transmission due to lower solar radiance backgrounds. For the beam steering, thermo-optic phase shifting is used for azimuthal plane beam steering and laser wavelength tuning is used for elevation plane beam steering. The OPA structure disclosed comprises a wavelength-tunable a QCL, a 1×32 splitter, thermo-optic phase-shifters, and sub-wavelength grating emitters. The disclosed OPA provides a low-cost, low-loss, low-power consumption, robust, small footprint, apparatus that may be used with expendable UAV swarms. A LiDAR may be created by monolithically integrating a QCD with the apparatus. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

A tunable laser includes a semiconductor optical amplifier, a waveguide wavelength-tunable filter that forms the tunable laser with the semiconductor optical amplifier, an optical splitting mechanism set on a coupling optical waveguide that couples the wavelength-tunable filter and the semiconductor optical amplifier, a first optical splitter of a waveguide type that splits at least part of a light beam split by the optical splitting mechanism into two light beams, a first optical waveguide coupled to one output end of the first optical splitter, a second optical waveguide that is coupled to another output end of the first optical splitter and includes a delay waveguide, a 90° hybrid waveguide that includes two input ports to which an output light beam from the first optical waveguide and an output light beam from the second optical waveguide are input and four output ports that output four output light beams.

An oscillation wavelength adjustment type TLD for adjusting a control amount of a resonator length L, independently from physical property values of a waveguide material when a waveguide is used in the phase adjustment, without an external resonator structure in accordance with a MEMS technology employs a reflective phase adjuster (20) including a multi-mode interference waveguide (21), which is optically coupled to an optical gain waveguide and has a configuration including one input port and five output ports, and a reflective delay line array (25) connected to an output waveguide on a side of the five output ports of the multi-mode interference waveguide (21). Five reflective delay lines (24-0 to 24-4) provided in the reflective delay line array (25) are capable of adjusting the intensity of reciprocating light in accordance with a wavelength change of transmitted light. The intensity of the reciprocating light can also be adjusted by an electric signal applied from the outside.