Pulsed injection locking dynamics of passively mode-locked external-cavity semiconductor laser systems for all-optical clock recovery

The performance characteristics of a pulse injection locked, passively mode-locked (PML) external-cavity semiconductor laser system for all-optical clock recovery are investigated in detail. It is important to characterize the clock recovery dynamics to understand the fundamental capabilities and limitations of the clock recovery system. It is experimentally shown that these devices offer robust clock recovery with low phase and amplitude noise, low injected data power requirements, large frequency locking bandwidth, large phase tracking bandwidth, short lockup time, long dephasing time and immunity to bit-pattern-effects. Harmonic clock generation and subharmonic clock generation are demonstrated for data-rate conversion applications.