Patent 7145923 was granted and assigned to Bookham Technology on December, 2006 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A tuneable laser has a gain section bounded at one end by a first reflector in the form of a distributed Bragg reflector adapted to produce a comb of reflective peaks and on the other end by a second Bragg reflector, the second Bragg reflector adapted to reflect at a plurality of wavelengths and being capable of being varied selectively through discrete segments so that one or more segments of the Bragg reflector can be tuned to a lower wavelength to reflect with a segment reflecting at that lower wavelength to enhance the reflectivity at that lower wavelength.