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US 12,199,404 B2Granted
Semiconductor optical amplifier light combiner
AssigneeOpenLight Photonics, Inc.
InventorsJohn Parker, Tom Mader, Steven B. Alleston
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Disclosed is a coherent optical combining photonic integrated circuit that can detect and align light amplified by a scalable quantity of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). The light can be split into beams and amplified by individual SOAs in a PIC and combined via couplers in the PIC. The combined light can be measured using a photodetector and the light beams can be adjusted based the photodetector measurement to coherently combine the light to achieve high optical power from the photonic integrated circuit.
Claims20
A method comprising:
- receiving a beam at an optical splitter in a photonic integrated circuit;
- splitting the beam into a first beam and a second beam using the optical splitter;
- amplifying the first beam and the second beam using a pair of semiconductor optical amplifiers in the photonic integrated circuit to result in an amplified first beam and an amplified second beam;
- phase shifting the amplified first beam using a phase shifter in the photonic integrated circuit;
- combining the amplified first beam and the amplified second beam using an optical combiner to form a combined beam;
- detecting an optical coherence of the combined beam using a photodetector that measures a current of the combined beam;
- aligning, using control circuitry, phases of the first beam and the second beam by adjusting the phase shifting of the first beam using the phase shifter, the phase shifter being adjusted by the control circuitry based on a current generated by the photodetector from detecting the combined beam, the aligning causing optically coherent combined light to be output from the optical combiner that combines the first beam and the second beam;
- and
- propagating the optically coherent combined light on an output waveguide integrated in the photonic integrated circuit.
6 more elements
A photonic integrated circuit comprising:
- an optical beam splitter to receive and split a beam of light into a first beam and a second beam;
- a pair of semiconductor optical amplifiers to amplify the first beam and the second beam, resulting in an amplified first beam and an amplified second beam;
- a phase shifter to phase shift the amplified first beam;
- an optical combiner to combine the amplified first beam and the amplified second beam to form a combined beam;
- a photodetector to measure current of the combined beam;
- control circuitry configured to align the phases of the first beam and the second beam by adjusting the phase shifting of the first beam using the phase shifter, the phase shifter being adjusted by the control circuitry based on a current generated by the photodetector from detecting the combined beam, the aligning causing optically coherent combined light to be output from the optical combiner that combines the first beam and the second beam;
- and
- an output waveguide to propagate the optically coherent combined light.
5 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.