A Review of Photonic Systems-on-Chip Enabled by Widely Tunable Lasers

Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) on indium phosphide have matured significantly over the past couple of decades and have found use in many system applications. Some PIC efforts on other group III-V substrates have also been initiated. In numerous cases, the usefulness of these PICs is because of the reduction in size, weight, and power they provide, but in many cases also because of the higher performance made possible by the improved relative phase stability among optical paths as well as the reduction of inter-element coupling losses. In this paper, as part of this special issue in tribute to Prof. Daniel Dapkus, we focus on monolithic PICs that provide a system function, especially those that incorporate and build on widely-tunable laser technology as a key element. Some of the early widely-tunable laser work is reviewed, and a selection of past system-on-a-chip developments is presented as background. Then, more recent system-on-a-chip advances performed by the author’s groups are reviewed in more detail. Key advances are highlighted.