title: Electrically tunable lasers made from electro-optically active photonics band gap materials.
abstract: External cavity-free and electrically tunable laser made from photonics band gap (PBG) materials with electrically tunable stop band is reported. The tunable PBG materials are developed from a family of novel cholesteric liquid crystals (CLC) with electrically variable pitch that adopts a non-constant distribution in space across the CLC film. The CLC exhibits a distributed feedback cavity whose resonant frequency can be electrically varied over a spectral range wider than 300 nm. Under an optical pumping and subject to a variable electric field, a tunable laser has been demonstrated in experiment that shows a wavelength tuning over 33 nm.
authors.forename: Haiping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Jianhui
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Le
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li