Patent ID: 7653094
Filing Date: 2010-01-26
Classification: H01S

Abstract:
1. An external cavity laser, comprising: a laser radiation source that includes a gain medium having a back facet and a front facet and a collimating lens positioned to receive radiation from the front facet and to output a collimated beam of radiation away from the front facet along a collimated beam optical path; a grating element, a surface plane of the grating element positioned to receive the collimated beam of radiation along the collimated beam optical path, and to provide a first order diffracted beam of radiation and a reflected zero order output beam of radiation; a monolithic flexure body comprising a rigid frame, a flexure arm monolithically attached to the rigid frame by a flexure hinge, a first actuator mounting element attached to the rigid frame, and a second actuator mounting element attached to the flexure arm; a tuning mirror mounted to the flexure arm to pivot about a hinge axis of the flexure hinge, wherein the tuning mirror is positioned to receive the diffracted beam approximately at normal incidence to an effective reflection plane of the tuning mirror and to reflect the diffracted beam of radiation back to the grating element where the diffracted beam of radiation is diffracted back to the laser radiation source and the hinge axis approximately corresponds to an intersection of the effective reflecting plane and the surface plane of the grating element; and an actuator located between the first and second actuator mounting elements and attached to the first mounting element at a first actuator attachment location and attached to the second mounting element at a second actuator attachment location, the actuator operable to controllably pivot the flexure arm and the tuning mirror about the hinge axis of the flexure hinge in order to controllably tune an operating wavelength of the external cavity laser, wherein the first actuator driver mounting element comprises a first actuator mounting flexure element located proximate to the first actuator attachment location; and the second actuator driver mounting element comprises a second flexure element located proximate to the second actuator attachment location.