Tunable laser based on a semiconductor optical amplifier of red spectral region

A tunable laser containing a recently developed travelling wave semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) of the red spectral region as an active element and an acousto-optic tunable filter in an external fibre ring cavity is studied. Continuous wavelength tuning was achieved within a spectra band up to 20 nm wide with a rate up to 10⁴ nm s^-1 at a spectral linewidth below 0.04 nm and a cw output power up to 2 mW. The use of one more similar SOA as an output power amplifier made it possible to increase the output power to 15 mW.