Stability and spectral behavior of grating-controlled actively mode-locked lasers

Author

Lowery, Arthur James ; Onodera, Noriaki ; Tucker, Rodney S.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Electron. Eng., Melbourne Univ., Parkville, Vic., Australia

Volume

27

Issue

11

fYear

1991

fDate

11/1/1991 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

2422

Lastpage

2430

Abstract

Amplitude, timing, and wavelength instabilities in a semiconductor mode-locked laser are studied experimentally and by using an accurate numerical model. It is shown that these instabilities can occur when the RF drive frequency is tuned to give a minimum average pulsewidth. It is shown that experimental measurement techniques, such as sampling and averaging, can mask these instabilities. Using this numerical model, it is shown that the wavelength instability is associated with the amplitude and timing instabilities and that the large broadening of the optical spectrum observed experimentally is caused by a cyclic wavelength instability

Keywords

diffraction gratings; laser frequency stability; laser mode locking; laser theory; semiconductor junction lasers; RF drive frequency; accurate numerical model; amplitude instabilities; averaging; cyclic wavelength instability; experimental measurement techniques; grating-controlled actively mode-locked lasers; instabilities; minimum average pulsewidth; optical spectrum broadening; sampling; semiconductor mode-locked laser; spectral behavior; stability; timing; wavelength instabilities; Gratings; Laser mode locking; Laser tuning; Numerical models; Optical pulses; Radio frequency; Semiconductor lasers; Space vector pulse width modulation; Stability; Timing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.100881

Filename

100881