Experimental Study of the Timing Jitter of a Passively Mode-Locked External-Cavity Semiconductor Laser Subject to Repetition Rate Transitions and Optical Feedback

Author

Rauch, Simon ; Drzewietzki, Lukas ; Klehr, Andreas ; Sacher, Joachim ; Elsassar, Wolfgang ; Breuer, Stefan

Author_Institution

Inst. of Appl. Phys., Tech. Univ. Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

Volume

51

Issue

4

fYear

2015

fDate

Apr-15

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

7

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the timing jitter (TJ) of a passively mode-locked external-cavity diode laser. Variation of the gain current and the absorber reverse bias voltage allows transitions from fundamental mode-locking up to seventh harmonic mode-locking. Hereby, a reduction of the TJ as a function of the harmonic mode-locking order is found. Furthermore, the application of optical feedback results in an additional reduction of TJ for almost the whole investigated operation range. In particular, the reduction increases with harmonic mode-locking order. The highest observed reduction of TJ amounts to a factor of 10 as compared with the free-running case which corresponds to a repetition-rate linewidth reduction by a factor of 100.

Keywords

laser cavity resonators; laser feedback; laser mode locking; laser transitions; semiconductor lasers; timing jitter; absorber reverse bias voltage; gain current; harmonic mode-locking; optical feedback; passively mode-locked external-cavity semiconductor laser; repetition rate transitions; timing jitter; Cavity resonators; Frequency control; Harmonic analysis; Noise; Optical feedback; Resonant frequency; Timing jitter; Laser mode-locking; optical feedback; timing jitter;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2015.2402431

Filename

7042232