Suppression of instabilities and pulsewidth limitation by two-photon absorption in mode-locked lasers

Author

Thoen, E.R. ; Koontz, E.M. ; Jones, D.J. ; Kartner, F.X. ; Ippen, E.P. ; Kolodziejski, L.A. ; Barbier, D.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA

fYear

1999

fDate

28-28 May 1999

Firstpage

440

Abstract

Summary form only given. The importance of mode-locking lasers using semiconductor saturable absorbers necessitates a more thorough investigation of the saturable absorber nonlinearities. Saturation measurements of a resonantly-coated InGaAs/InP semiconductor saturable absorber mirror reveal the presence of two-photon absorption at energy densities obtainable in mode-locked fiber and waveguide lasers. Observations of the dynamics of an Er/Yb waveguide laser mode-locked by this absorber indicate that two-photon absorption is responsible for both restricting the minimum pulsewidth and suppressing Q-switched-mode-locking.

Keywords

Q-switching; laser mirrors; laser mode locking; laser stability; optical pulse generation; optical saturable absorption; two-photon processes; waveguide lasers; Er/Yb waveguide laser; InGaAs-InP; Q-switched-mode-locking; absorber nonlinearities; instabilities suppression; mode-locked lasers; pulsewidth limitation; quantum wells; resonantly-coated mirror; semiconductor saturable absorbers; two-photon absorption; Absorption; Density measurement; Energy measurement; Fiber lasers; Laser mode locking; Resonance; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor waveguides; Space vector pulse width modulation; Waveguide lasers;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics, 1999. CLEO '99. Summaries of Papers Presented at the Conference on

Conference_Location

Baltimore, MD, USA

Print_ISBN

1-55752-595-1

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CLEO.1999.834419

Filename

834419