Theoretical Study of Colliding Pulse Passively Mode-Locked Semiconductor Ring Lasers With an Intracavity Mach–Zehnder Modulator

Author

Moskalenko, Valentina ; Javaloyes, Julien ; Balle, Salvador ; Smit, Meint K. ; Bente, Erwin A. J. M.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Eindhoven Univ. of Technol., Eindhoven, Netherlands

Volume

50

Issue

6

fYear

2014

fDate

Jun-14

Firstpage

415

Lastpage

422

Abstract

In this paper, we theoretically study the impact of an intracavity filter based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) on the pulses emitted by InGaAsP/InP passively mode-locked quantum well ring lasers. The filter allows to control the net gain curvature in the device, hereby providing for control over the modes that participate in the dynamics. Simulations of a traveling-wave model indicate that the pulsewidth can be controlled and reduced down to 500 fs. We present and verify a simple algorithm, which can be used for calculating the optimum values of the MZI parameters. The optimum parameters are then used in the study of an MZI passive-mode-locked laser under various operating conditions.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; Mach-Zehnder interferometers; gallium arsenide; indium compounds; laser cavity resonators; optical pulse generation; quantum well lasers; ring lasers; InGaAsP-InP; MZI; colliding pulse passive mode-locking; intracavity Mach-Zehnder modulator; net gain curvature; quantum well ring lasers; semiconductor ring lasers; time 500 fs; traveling-wave model; Cavity resonators; Gain; Laser mode locking; Modulation; Optical pulse shaping; Optical pulses; Ring lasers; Semiconductor laser; mode-locked laser; quantum well laser; short pulse generation;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2014.2316339

Filename

6785958