10-GHz ultralow-noise optical sampling stream from a semiconductor diode ring laser

Author

DePriest, C.M. ; Braun, A. ; Abeles, J.H. ; Delfyett, P.J., Jr.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Opt., CREOL, Orlando, FL, USA

Volume

13

Issue

10

fYear

2001

Firstpage

1109

Lastpage

1111

Abstract

We report, what is to our knowledge, the lowest-noise pulsetrain produced to date with an actively mode-locked external-cavity semiconductor diode laser. Operating characteristics at 10 GHz include dispersion-compensated pulsewidths as short as 1.2 ps, amplitude noise as low as 0.12% rms, and residual phase noise as low as 43-fs rms. Potential application of such a laser in a next-generation optical analog-to-digital converter would theoretically provide as much as 8.6 bits of resolution, while sampling a 5-GHz waveform at the Nyquist frequency.

Keywords

Nyquist criterion; analogue-digital conversion; laser cavity resonators; laser mode locking; laser noise; ring lasers; semiconductor device noise; semiconductor optical amplifiers; 1.2 ps; 43 fs; GHz ultralow-noise optical sampling stream; Nyquist frequency; actively mode-locked external-cavity semiconductor diode laser; amplitude noise; dispersion-compensated pulsewidths; lowest-noise pulsetrain; next-generation optical analog-to-digital converter; residual phase noise; semiconductor diode ring laser; Laser mode locking; Laser noise; Laser theory; Noise level; Optical noise; Optical pulses; Phase noise; Sampling methods; Semiconductor diodes; Semiconductor lasers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.950751

Filename

950751