Patent 7529279 was granted and assigned to Bookham Technology on May, 2009 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A tuneable laser includes a gain section (50) bounded by two mirrors (51 and 52) at least one mirror being a chirp grating. At least one of the mirrors includes a plurality of selectable electrodes (59 to 65) to enable the grating to be selectively activated to produce a selective reflection at a predetermined wavelength.