An optoelectronic oscillator using an 850-nm VCSEL for generating low jitter optical pulses

We demonstrate an optoelectronic oscillator using a gain-switched vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser in a fiber-feedback configuration. We simultaneously generate a 2-GHz optical pulse stream at 850 nm with 750-fs timing jitter (over 100 Hz-10 MHz range) along with an electrical signal that is locked to the repetition rate of the optical pulses. The timing jitter performance is confirmed by measuring higher harmonic phase noise.     

Ultralow timing jitter picosecond pulse generation fromelectrically gain-switched oxidized vertical-cavity surface-emittinglasers

Ultralow timing jitter picosecond optical pulses are generated by electrically gain switching oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) at repetition rates of up to 10.0 GHz. Timing jitter as low as 1.2 ps is measured, which is at least four times lower than that measured for implanted VCSELs. The ultralow timing jitter is attributed to the high level of spontaneous coupling in the oxide-confined VCSEL due to multimode operation resulting from the index guiding properties of the oxide layer     

Pulsation stabilization and enhancement in self-pulsating laserdiodes

The authors report stabilization and enhancement of the optical pulses of self-pulsating laser diodes using a combination of self-injection locking and frequency locked loops. A record short term stability of one part in 1,500,000 (3 dB linewidth of less than 800 Hz at 1.3 GHz) was readily achieved with continuous tunability from 600 MHz to over 3 GHz (harmonics to over 12 GHz). The reduction in timing jitter resulted in a <10 dB improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio, making self-pulsating lasers a potential source of ultrastable picosecond pulses in both the optical and the electrical domains. The latter characteristics make self-pulsating lasers an attractive candidate for widely tunable microwave oscillators or sources for optical (electrical) sampling     

The effect of external optical feedback on timing jitter in modulated laser diodes

Laser diodes with optical feedback are numerically modeled using single-mode rate equations. The effects of the optical feedback on the pulse turn-on delay and timing jitter are examined, for gain-switching, periodic and pseudorandom modulation formats. It is shown that there is a change in turn-on delay and a considerable increase in the timing jitter due to the changes in the output power distributions as optical feedback increases. The cause of the increased jitter is found to be the additional intensity noise introduced by the optical feedback.<>     

Dual Semiconductor Laser System With Rapid Time-Delay for Ultrafast Measurements

We present a dual semiconductor laser system at 1.55 mum with femtosecond pulse widths and very low timing jitter for rapid pump-probe measurements. Synchronizing the two lasers to the same low-noise radio frequency-oscillator allows the use of an electrical phase shifter for the relative time delay between the lasers. This leads to a large scanning window that nearly matches the pulse period of 2.5 ns, as well as achieving a discrete time step of below 100 fs. The timing jitter of the complete dual laser system including all electronics is only 540 fs across the whole time delay. The nonlinear pulse compression using especially designed comb-like dispersion profiled fiber leads to autocorrelation widths of 310 fs. The system performance, i.e., the high time resolution is demonstrated by optical cross correlation of the pump and probe pulse, showing a very low full-width at half maximum of 1.3 ps     

极低时间抖动的飞秒激光技术（特邀）

飞秒激光器的时间抖动（或定时抖动）是指其输出脉冲的时域位置相对于理想周期信号的短期随机偏差。在毫秒量级的时间尺度上，飞秒激光器的脉冲序列具有严格的一致性，其定时抖动甚至低至阿秒量级。飞秒激光器的这种独特性质及其支持的前沿应用构成了“阿秒时间精度的超快光子学”这一全新的超快研究分支。文中回顾了近年来飞秒激光器定时抖动研究进展、高时间分辨率的定时抖动测量技术、以及不同类型的飞秒激光源能够达到的最低抖动水平。最后介绍了低抖动飞秒激光器在大科学装置同步、高速模数转换、绝对测距、相干脉冲合成等领域的应用。     

Low-noise synthesis of microwave and millimetre-wave signals with optical frequency comb generator

The phase noise of a 20 GHz picosecond optical pulse train generated by a modulator-based optical frequency comb generator is analysed. The residual timing jitter is ⩾10 fs for Fourier frequencies from 10 Hz to 10 MHz. Photodetection of the optical pulse train provides millimetre-wave signals with similarly low residual jitter at 40, 60, and 80 GHz with applicable powers of 27.5, 210.5, and 213 dBm, respectively.     

Pulse repetition frequency multiplication via intracavity opticalfiltering in AM mode-locked fiber ring lasers

We demonstrate pulse repetition frequency multiplication in AM mode-locked fiber ring lasers using optical filtering realized via an intracavity fiber Fabry-Perot filter (FFP) and show that the generated optical pulses are highly stable in amplitude noise and timing jitter. A 3.477-GHz optical pulse train is generated using a modulation signal of 869.284 MHz, a fourth subharmonic multiple of the 3.48-GHz free spectral range of FFP. The generated optical pulses exhibit a high degree of pulse stability in terms of a large suppression of supermode noise, a low amplitude noise of 0.93 %, and a timing jitter of 1.2 ps     

Measuring timing jitter with optical cross correlations

The use of optical cross correlations for characterizing timing jitter is investigated. Applications, limitations, and correspondence to radio frequency measurements are presented and clarified. The probability density function of the timing jitter of semiconductor mode-locked lasers is deconvolved from the cross-correlation measurements with the aid of pulse characterization techniques.     

GS-DFB半导体激光器的光自注入技术

报道了一种光脉冲自注入的新方法 ,它能使增益开关 DFB激光器输出光脉冲的时间抖动从 5.7ps减小到 1.2 ps,分析了注入光延迟时间及功率对时间抖动的影响 ,指出为取得抑制时间抖动的最佳效果 ,必须选择合适的反馈光脉冲延迟时间和适当的反馈光功率。实验中观察到在增益开关 DFB激光器光脉冲建立期间注入反馈光时 ,输出光脉冲会发生严重畸变。     

Simple picosecond pulse generation scheme for injection lasers

A simple scheme is reported for generating picosecond optical pulses from injection lasers based on short electrical pulse excitation. An integrated step recovery diode impulse-train generator (`comb? generator) which gives 50 ps 25 V electrical pulses at 200 to 500 MHz rates is used to drive the injection lasers. Optical pulses as short as 40 ps are generated by the corresponding electrical drive pulses.     

Optoelectronic measurements of picosecond electrical pulsepropagation in coplanar waveguide transmission lines

Observations are presented concerning the effects of coplanar waveguide transmission lines on the propagation of picosecond electrical pulses using an optoelectronic time-domain measurement technique. Effects of various test structure design factors such as substrate thickness, thickness of transmission line metallization, discontinuity spacing, ground plane width, pulser/sampler line length, and pulser/sampler geometry on picosecond electrical pulse propagation in microwave/millimeter wave coplanar waveguide transmission lines are discussed, and schemes for minimizing the adverse effects of each of the above factors are provided     

Synchronization of passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasersand its application to optical communication networks

We synchronized two passively mode-locked erbium-doped fiber lasers using a phase lock loop with a large dynamic range and bandwidth, which is realized by using a novel acoustooptic-modulator-grating scheme. Cross-correlation of the two lasers shows the interlaser jitter is under 2 ps (same as the laser pulse width) for period as long as hours. To prove the quality of phase locking, we apply synchronized lasers in two all-optical network applications, one of which requires the lasers to have the same wavelength and the second requires the lasers to be at different wavelengths. In the single wavelength application, the synchronized lasers drive a cascade of two low-birefringence, polarization maintaining, optical logic gates with switching timing window of 4 and 5 ps, respectively. We obtain nonlinear transmission of ~50% at a switching energy of 8 pJ and contrast ratio of 16 dB, which are comparable performance as that obtained using a single laser. In the different wavelength application, we use 0.8 ps pulses to switch 2 ps pulses in a two-wavelength nonlinear optical loop mirror demultiplexer with timing window of 5.5 ps. Stable switching is reached at a efficiency as high as 90% at switching energy of 0.8 pJ, and a contrast ratio of 20 dB. Excellent agreement is found between the experimental data and the simulated results, which exclude the timing jitter     

Coupling coefficient dependence on oscillation frequency stability of self-pulsating DFB laser diodes

Grating coupling strength effects in self-pulsating distributed feedback lasers were investigated. Choosing the coupling coefficient appropriately, improvements in the timing jitter as well as the injection locking sensitivity were observed experimentally. The results are attributed to a co-ordination of optical feedback strengths between dual lasing modes.     

Synchronized chaotic optical communications at high bit rates

Basic issues regarding synchronized chaotic optical communications at high bit rates using semiconductor lasers are considered. Recent experimental results on broadband, high-frequency, phase-locked chaos synchronization, and message encoding-decoding at 2.5 Gb/s are presented. System performance at a bit rate of 10 Gb/s is numerically studied for the application of three encryption schemes, namely chaos shift keying, chaos masking, and additive chaos modulation, to three chaotic semiconductor laser systems, namely the optical injection system, the optical feedback system, and the optoelectronic feedback system. By causing synchronization error in the forms of synchronization deviation and desynchronization bursts, the channel noise and the laser noise both have significant effects on the system performance at high bit rates. Among the three laser systems, the optoelectronic feedback system has the best performance while the optical feedback system has the worst. Among the three encryption schemes, only the performance of additive chaos modulation with low-noise lasers is acceptable at high bit rates.     

Measurement and simulation of the turn-on delay time jitter ingain-switched semiconductor lasers

The turn-on delay time jitter of four different unbiased gain-switched laser types was determined by measuring the temporal probability distribution of the leading edge of the emitted optical pulse. One single-mode 1.5-μm distributed feedback laser and three multimode Fabry-Perot lasers emitting at 750 nm and 1.3 μm were investigated. The jitter was found to decrease for all lasers with increasing injection current. For multimode lasers it decreases from 8 ps excited slightly above threshold down to below 2 ps at three times the threshold current. The jitter of the distributed feedback (DFB) laser is a factor of 3-5 larger than the jitter of the three multimode lasers. A model for predicting the turn-on delay time jitter is presented and explains the experiments quantitatively     

1064-nm DFB laser diode modules applicable to seeder for pulse-on-demand fiber laser systems

Semiconductor DFB (Distributed feedback) laser diodes with an operating wavelength of 1064 nm, which is suitable for pulse-on-demand fiber laser, have been developed. The stable performance of CW and nanosecond/picosecond pulsed operation is reviewed. By applying gain-switching operation with a simple direct modulation technique, 50-ps pulse generation with a stable spectral single-mode property was obtained. For the efficient amplification of the obtained 50-ps pulse, a monolithic semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) was integrated into the DFB lasers. An improved peak power of 300 mW at 50-ps pulse was observed with limited optical noise injection when the synchronous modulation technique of the DFB and the SOA was employed. Short cavity lasers showed a high-frequency response compared to the original DFB lasers and achieved a short pulse width of 13 ps by standard gain-switched operation.     

80-160-GHz mode-locked fiber ring laser synchronized to external optical pulse stream

The authors present a novel scheme to generate ultrahigh repetition rate picosecond pulses synchronized to an optical pulse stream in an actively mode-locked fiber ring laser. A monolithic Mach-Zehnder interferometer with integrated semiconductor optical amplifiers serves as an 80-GHz optically controlled modulator. 80-GHz transform-limited 2.1-ps Gaussian pulse with low timing jitter, extinction ratios up to 25 dB, and 5 mW of average output power are demonstrated. The laser is wavelength tunable over more than 15 nm around 1555 nm. At 160 GHz, 2.5-ps pulse trains with 3-mW output power are generated by rational harmonic mode locking.     

A 10-GHz Optoelectronic Oscillator at 850 nm Using a Single-Mode VCSEL and a Photonic Crystal Fiber

We demonstrate an optoelectronic oscillator using a gain-switched single-mode vertical cavity surface-emitting laser and a single-mode photonic crystal fiber. A 10-GHz optical pulse train at 850 nm with a timing jitter of 1.2 ps was successfully generated.     

铜蒸气激光链中激光脉冲的抖动分析

运用概率论方法导出了铜蒸气激光链中激光脉冲抖动量的表达式,结果表明:当铜蒸气激光器并联时,两台激光器输出光脉冲之间的抖动量的平方等于每台激光器输出光脉冲相对于电触发脉冲抖动量的平方和;当多台铜蒸气激光器串联放大时,第m台激光器输出光脉冲相对于振荡器输出光脉冲的抖动量随m的增加而增加,但总是小于每台激光器放电脉冲抖动量的2~(1/2)百倍。实验结果与理论计算基本相符。