Title

High-quality photonic sampling streams from a semiconductor diode ring laser

Authors

Authors

C. M. DePriest; T. Yilmaz; A. Braun; J. Abeles;P. J. Delfyett

Abbreviated Journal Title

IEEE J. Quantum Electron.

Keywords

active modelocking; amplitude noise; optical analog-to-digital; conversion; phase noise; semiconductor optical amplifiers; timing jitter; TO-DIGITAL CONVERTER; MODE-LOCKED LASERS; TIMING JITTER; CONVERSION; GENERATION; SYSTEM; Engineering, Electrical & Electronic; Optics; Physics, Applied

Abstract

We report on the development of an ultralow-noise, external-cavity, actively mode-locked semiconductor diode laser for application in next-generation photonic sampling systems. A summary of harmonically mode-locked noise characteristics in a 65-MHz ring cavity is presented through the range of pulse repetition frequencies between 130 MHz and 8.3 GHz (2nd-128th harmonic). Important implications regarding the use of gain-versus-loss modulation as the active modelocking mechanisms are discussed. We also report what are, to our knowledge, the lowest noise characteristics achieved to date for a semiconductor diode laser operating at 10 GHz. Individually optimized results of 0.12% rms amplitude noise (10 Hz-10 MHz), and 43 fs rms residual phase jitter (10 Hz-10 MHz) provide a theoretical resolution of 8.6 bits in a 10-GSPS optical analog-to-digital converter. We have also achieved dispersion-compensated pulsewidths as short as 1.2 ps, and shown successful operation of a novel phase-locked-loop capable of reducing the rms; residual phase noise by as much as 91% within its response bandwidth. Finally, the first measurements of residual phase noise out to the Nyquist frequency (5 GHz) are presented, providing an upper bound on the rms residual phase jitter of 121 Is (10 Hz-5 GHz).

Journal Title

Ieee Journal of Quantum Electronics

Volume

38

Issue/Number

4

Publication Date

1-1-2002

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

380

Last Page

389

WOS Identifier

WOS:000174630600009

ISSN

0018-9197

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