Reliable Integrated Photonic Light Sources Using Curved Al2O3:Er3+ Distributed Feedback Lasers

We propose a curved erbium doped aluminum oxide (Al2O3:Er3+) distributed feedback (DFB) laser for a reliable integrated photonics light source. The curved structure allows us for compensation of the radially varying film thickness due to the Al2O3:Er3+ deposition process. In a conventional straight DFB structure, we observe randomly distorted transmission responses and relatively higher threshold power even for an estimated <;0.5% thickness variation. The transmission response of the curved DFB laser shows good agreement with an ideal DFB structure of uniform thickness. We show 1.2 mW output power with a threshold power of 16 mW, demonstrating >6 times lower threshold compared to the straight DFB laser.