Cylindrical vector (CV) beams are highly desirable for wide applications ranging from manipulation to communications. Despite diverse schemes of CV beam emitters, the efficient generation of vector beams by active photonic integrated devices, especially for direct modulation, is still an outstanding challenge. Here, we report the first high-speed directly modulated CV beam laser under electrical pumping. InP-based microring cavities with two sets of optimized second-order gratings enable single-mode lasing and efficient emission assisted by ion implantation. The high-differential-gain multiplequantum-well structure and small active region benefit high-speed modulation. The surface emission facilitates easy 2D array integration. CV beam lasing is achieved with >1 mW output power and ∼50 dB side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR). CV beam lasers at 8−20 Gbit/s are realized in the experiment. Moreover, a 2 km fiber vector eigenmode transmission link, seeded by a 10 Gbit/s directly modulated CV beam laser, is also demonstrated with favorable performance. These may open a door to find more CV beam enabled classical and quantum communication applications employing integrated lasers.

A thermally tuned multi-channel interference widely tunable semiconductor laser is designed and demonstrated, for the first time to our knowledge, that realizes a tuning range of more than 45 nm, side-mode suppression ratios up to 56 dB, and Lorentzian linewidth below 160 kHz. AlGaInAs multiple quantum wells (MQWs) were used to reduce linewidth, which have a lower linewidth enhancement factor compared with InGaAsP MQWs. To decrease the power consumption of micro-heaters, air gaps were fabricated below the arm phase sections. For a 75 μm long suspended thermal tuning waveguide, about 6.3 mW micro-heater tuning power is needed for a 2 π round-trip phase change. Total micro-heater tuning power required is less than 50 mW across the whole tuning range, which is lower than that of the reported thermally tuned tunable semiconductor lasers.

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