Heterogeneously integrating III-V materials on silicon photonic integrated circuits has emerged as a promising approach to make advanced laser sources for optical communication and sensing applications. Tunable semiconductor lasers operating in the 2–2.5 μm range are of great interest for industrial and medical applications since many gases (e.g., CO2, CO, CH4) and biomolecules (such as blood glucose) have strong absorption features in this wavelength region. The development of integrated tunable laser sources in this wavelength range enables low-cost and miniature spectroscopic sensors. Here we report heterogeneously integrated widely tunable III-V-on-silicon Vernier lasers using two silicon microring resonators as the wavelength tuning components. The laser has a wavelength tuning range of more than 40 nm near 2.35 μm. By combining two lasers with different distributed Bragg reflectors, a tuning range of more than 70 nm is achieved. Over the whole tuning range, the side-mode suppression ratio is higher than 35 dB. As a proof-of-principle, this III-V-on-silicon Vernier laser is used to measure the absorption lines of CO. The measurement results match very well with the high-resolution transmission molecular absorption (HITRAN) database and indicate that this laser is suitable for broadband spectroscopy.

We demonstrate a single-longitudinal-mode Ho3+:YVO4 unidirectional ring laser based on the acousto-optic effect, utilizing the features of the acousto-optical Q switch and half-wave plate to achieve unidirectional operation. The maximum power achieved in the single-longitudinal-mode at 2053.9 nm is 941 mW when the absorbed power is set as 4.4 W, yielding a nearly 50% slope efficiency. The M2 factor is 1.1. The results show that such a technique offers a potentially promising new method for achieving a high power and narrow linewidth 2 μm single-longitudinal-mode laser.

A wavelength-swept laser is constructed using a free space external cavity configuration coupled with a fiber-based ring cavity at the 850 nm region. The external cavity filter employs a galvo-mirror scanner with a diffraction grating for wavelength selection. The filter is connected to a ring cavity through an optical circulator. The ring cavity contains a broadband semiconductor optical amplifier with a high optical output. The performance of this laser is demonstrated with broad bandwidths and narrow linewidths. The 3 dB linewidth and the bandwidth of this source are 0.05 nm (～20 GHz) and 48 nm, respectively. The maximum output power is 26 mW at 160 mA current.

In order to solve the problem of low measurement accuracy caused by uneven imaging resolutions, we develop a three-dimensional catadioptric vision sensor using 20 to 100 lasers arranged in a circular array called omnidirectional dot maxtric projection (ODMP). Based on the imaging characteristic of the sensor, the ODMP can image the area with a high image resolution. The proposed sensor with ODMP can minimize the loss of the detail information by adjusting the projection density. In evaluating the performance of the sensor, real experiments show the designed sensor has high efficiency and high precision for the measurement of the inner surfaces of pipelines.

A compact and stable all-normal-dispersion mode-locked ring fiber laser with the repetition rate of 312 MHz is obtained with a wavelength-division multiplexing isolator. The compressed pulse is nearly transform-limited and the pulse width is 118 fs. It exhibits an optical efficiency of 50% and the maximum output power is about 205 mW with a 410 mW pump.

A continuous-wave all-solid-state tunable Ti:sapphire laser with compact configuration is presented. The frequency-tuning range extends from 760 to 825 nm by rotating the birefringent filters. When the intracavity etalon is locked on the oscillating frequency of the laser and the length of the resonator is scanned by the piezoelectric ceramics transducer, a maximal continuous frequency-tuning range of 15.3 GHz is realized. The obtained Ti:sapphire laser is successfully applied to scan the saturation absorption spectroscopy of D1 transitions of Rb87 atoms around the wavelength of 794.97 nm.

We experimentally and numerically demonstrate the generation of square pulses without any wave-breaking in a fiber ring laser. A segment of nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber is used to increase the laser cavity length and to optimize the parameters of the laser cavity. In the experiment, the pulse width can be tuned in a wide range from 13.5 to 119.5 ns without wave-breaking while the peak power remains almost constant. The maximum single-pulse energy is up to 65.58 nJ at a pump power of 508 mW. Numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental results. Numerical results also reveal the role of cavity length and nonlinearity in generating a square pulse without pulse breakup.