AN ELECTRONICALLY TUNABLE FIBER LASER WITH A LIQUID-CRYSTAL ETALON FILTER AS THE WAVELENGTH-TUNING ELEMENT

Wavelength-tunable lasers in the near infrared have a wide range of applications for fiber-based lightwave systems. In this letter, we describe a tunable erbium-doped fiber laser using a liquid-crystal etalon filter (LCF) as the wavelength-selective element. The laser is continuously tunable over a range of 45 nm (1523-1568 nm) with a voltage of 2.1-3.3 V applied to the LCF, and operates single-mode with a very narrow linewidth ( < 100 kHz). Our experiment demonstrates a potential for a compact laser source that can be tuned over a very large wavelength range with an IC-compatible voltage.