Soliton generation in semiconductor lasers for optical switching applications

Soliton switching in nonlinear optical loop mirrors using non-ideal pulses of the type generated by semiconductor lasers has been modelled. Highly chirped pulses, such as those produced by a gain switched DFB laser, are shown to inefficiently couple to solitons. A fibre grating external cavity semiconductor laser is shown to produce pulses with low chirp which will reduce the required switching power by a factor of three