High-power mode-locked external cavity semiconductor laser using inverse bow-tie semiconductor optical amplifiers

    Authors

    S. Gee; G. Alphonse; J. Connolly;P. J. Delfyett

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    IEEE J. Sel. Top. Quantum Electron.

    Keywords

    high-power diode lasers; mode-locked diode lasers; semiconductor optical; amplifiers; ultrafast pulse generation; PULSE GENERATION; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic; Optics; Physics, Applied

    Abstract

    This paper presents experimental results of using an inverse bow-tie gain guided semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as the optical gain element in a high-power external cavity semiconductor laser. An average output power of 700 mW is demonstrated in continuous-wave (CW) operation while 400 mW of average power is obtained in both passive and hybrid mode-locked operation,,vith subsequent optical amplification in an identical SOA, The mode-locked laser operates at a repetition rate of 1.062 GHz, owing to the interplay between the gain and saturable absorber dynamics, Optical pulses are generated with a temporal duration of 5 ps, which implies a pulse energy of 376 pJ, and a peak power of 60 W, Further reduction of the optical pulsewidth to 1.3 ps is also achieved by using dispersion compensation techniques. These results show the promise of novel SOA devices for use as gain elements in external cavity semiconductor lasers. The generated output pulse characteristics from mode-locked operation is sufficient for use in novel three-dimensional data storage applications, and in large-scale commercial printing and marking applications.

    Journal Title

    Ieee Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics

    Volume

    4

    Issue/Number

    2

    Publication Date

    1-1-1998

    Document Type

    Article; Proceedings Paper

    Language

    English

    First Page

    209

    Last Page

    215

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000074260200008

    ISSN

    1077-260X

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