Design of InP membrane laser in a photonic integrated circuit

Abstract: On-chip lasers are a necessity for realizing the full potential of high index contrast photonic integrated circuits. The feasibility of this has been investigated before by simulating the optical and thermal properties. In this paper, two possible configurations for such a laser are reported. As the active and the passive layers are vertically separated, optical simulations on tapers for coupling between the two have been performed. To couple out the light, gratings for 1.55 µm have been designed. All these results have been put together in designing a Fabry-Perot type laser and two types of ring laser, differing in the MMI coupler that they have in the ring - 1x2 or 2x2. Realization of these lasers is underway.