Patent ID: 7139295

Claim:
A system for tuning the wavelength of a laser beam emitted by a tunable laser, comprising: a tunable etalon assembly including a Fabry-Perot (“FP”) etalon and a thermal unit, wherein said FP etalon has paired reflectors to receive and wavelength filter the laser beam and said thermal unit thermally effects the separation of said paired reflectors in response to an etalon tuning signal; a photodetector suitable to receive the laser beam after filtering by said FP etalon and generate a detected signal based on transmitted intensity; and a controller suitable to: controllably generate said etalon tuning signal such that said thermal unit maintains said FP etalon at or changes said FP etalon to a specific temperature, thereby setting said paired reflectors to a corresponding separation where the FP etalon has a corresponding resonant frequency; select a lock point with respect to the transmitted intensity of the laser beam detected by said photodetector; and receive said detected signal and generate a laser tuning signal based thereon to control the tunable laser to emit the laser beam with a wavelength that results in the transmitted intensity coinciding with said lock point, thereby facilitating controllably tuning the wavelength of the laser beam emitted by the tunable laser.