Title

A Feedforward System For Dynamic Equalization Of A Chirped Laser Source Suitable For Photonic Analog-To-Digital Conversion

Keywords

Feedforward systems; Laser radar; Mode locked lasers; Optical tomography

Abstract

In this work we present a method for improving the uniformity of the optical spectrum or the temporal intensity profile of a quasi-CW, linearly chirped laser source covering the time interval between subsequent pulses. A novel laser cavity design, referred to as the Theta (T) cavity, provides linearly chirped pulses directly from the laser oscillator that having non-uniform optical spectrum, that is mapped into the temporal intensity profile of the pulse, due to the frequency-to-time mapping nature of this cavity design. The system developed in this work has been designed to improve the spectral and temporal intensity profile of lasers for photonic signal processing. A fiberized feed-forward system is implemented to reduce variations in the temporal intensity profile, or the optical spectrum due to the time-to-frequency mapping, input to the system. In the feedforward scheme presented, the quasi-CW pulse train generated from the laser is split and part of it is photodetected, while the electrical signal generated alters the transmittance of the second part of the input as it goes through an amplitude modulator, resulting in increase in the uniformity of the signal. The contrast of the optical spectrum of a chirped pulse at input to the system is improved from 51% to 16%, or 3.1 times. ©2009 SPIE.

Publication Date

9-9-2009

Publication Title

Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering

Volume

7339

Number of Pages

-

Document Type

Article; Proceedings Paper

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1117/12.820686

Socpus ID

69749121413 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/69749121413

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