Demonstration of down-chirped and chirp-free pulses fromhigh-repetition-rate passively mode-locked lasers |
| |
Authors: | Salvatore R.A. Yariv A. |
| |
Affiliation: | Dept. of Appl. Phys., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA; |
| |
Abstract: | Knowledge and control of the chirp parameters of semiconductor lasers is a prerequisite to obtaining transform-limited pulses and/or to compensate for group velocity dispersion in fiber. Here, we report measurements of the sign and magnitude of chirp in high-repetition-rate mode-locked semiconductor lasers. The chirp of these monolithic lasers is measured in the frequency domain, using filtering and cross-correlation techniques. For different injection currents, a range of different chirp values is measured, including strongly down-chirped pulses at higher injection currents and transform-limited pulses to slightly up-chirped pulses at lower injection currents. The pulse chirp and the resulting broadening are due to the algebraic addition of opposite-signed chirps due to saturation of the absorption section and the gain section. These may cancel each other under some conditions, leading to a soliton-like transform-limited pulse |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|