Photonic integrated circuit module manufacturer !%NeoPhotonics Corp.%! has completed the first phase of its plan to increase production capacity of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers (NLW-TL). Since initiating the production plan in the fourth quarter of 2011, the company has doubled its NLW-TL output and added seven additional customers and engaged with several others. Demand for the products has outstripped industry capacity because of the need for coherent optical technology coupled with the industry’s supply constraints attributed to the Thailand flooding in 2011. (See: Thailand Flood’s Impact on Optics Will Continue Well into 2012) “With the flooding in Thailand, the supply of narrow-linewidth tunable lasers has become a limiting factor in the shipment of 40 and 100 Gb/s coherent optical transport systems,” said Tim Jenks, chairman and CEO of NeoPhotonics. “Accordingly, we have stepped up our production to help satisfy this critical need.” The NLW-TLs are compact, widely tunable and narrow-linewidth assemblies with up to 35 mW of launch power in the C band and 20 mW in the L band. Narrow linewidths are designed to facilitate digital signal processing, which is used in coherent optical transmission to analyze the incoming signal when it is mixed with a local oscillator laser in a coherent receiver. For more information, visit: www.neophotonics.com