All-diode generation and amplification of 10 GHz pulse-trains from coupled-cavity mode-locked lasers using Slab-Coupled Waveguide Amplifiers

摘要

Compact sources of low noise multi-gigahertz pulse-trains and frequency combs are useful in applications such as optical arbitrary waveform generation and high speed analog to digital conversion [1–3]. Low pulse-to-pulse timing and amplitude jitter are essential to these applications. Additionally, applications requiring portability benefit from the use of semiconductor gain media. In this work, we present an actively mode-locked laser and an amplification stage both using Slab-Coupled Optical Waveguide Amplifiers (SCOWAs) [4–6] as gain media. The mode-locked laser is built with a nested cavity design with a long optical fiber cavity and high finesse Fabry-Pérot etalon (FPE). The output from this laser consists of a low-noise frequency comb with 10 GHz mode spacing and, in the time domain, a high repetition rate, low-noise pulse-train. The incorporation of SCOW amplifiers into this laser architecture has resulted in improved performance both in available power and timing jitter [5,6]. Furthermore, an external SCOWA has been used to amplify the output pulse-train and we have obtained a maximum output power of ∼390 mW. The signal degradation through the amplification stage is studied and no considerable degradation is observed in the timing jitter and spectral bandwidth of the output comb.