The quantum limit of timing jitter in actively mode-locked soliton fiber lasers

Summary form only given. The demand for stable, actively mode-locked fiber laser (AMLFL) sources with extremely small timing jitter has been driven by the development of high-speed optical communications systems and high-resolution optical sampling. Timing jitter degrades bit-error rates in the former and leads to sampling errors in the latter. AMLFL´s have been shown to exhibit very low timing jitter whose performance is limited by the phase noise of the external oscillator. In this paper, we determine the quantum-limited timing jitter of the AMLFL operating at GHz repetition rates and how it can be reduced.