Reduced timing jitter in surface emitting lasers

Summary form only given. Timing jitter sets one of the fundamental limits to short-haul optical transmission and fast analog to digital conversion using optical sampling techniques. In the work it is predicted that timing jitter is proportional to the volume of the active region of a laser. Therefore, very low timing jitters should be expected in small volume lasers. To verify this, studies of mode-locking and gain-switching in selectively oxidized vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) have been conducted. Our preliminary results indicate that both the pulse length and the timing jitter of the gain-switched VCSELs are comparable to that of the mode-locked ones and in agreement with theory.