Importance

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Abstract

A tunable etalon filter is formed by placing mirrors on either side of a spacer of a material which has a relatively large rate of change of refractive index with temperature, and coupling the filter to a thermoelectric cooler to control the temperature of the spacer and, therefore, the index of refraction of the spacer. More specifically, the spacer can be a silicon wafer, or a wafer of zinc sulfide or zinc selenide. The mirrors can be formed of quarter wavelength layer pairs of dielectric coatings of high and low refractive index material. The thermoelectric cooler, which can be coupled to a heat sink, controls the temperature of the spacer by either heating or cooling the spacer. In operation the filter is coarse tuned by adjusting its angle relative to the angle of a received optical signal. It is then fine tuned to the signal by adjusting the temperature of the spacer. The advantages of this filter are: large tunability by angle tuning; fine tuning by temperature; large free-spectral-range; narrow passband; low insertion loss; and high reliability.

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First Claim