Power dropout statistics of nearly-single-longitudinal-mode semiconductor lasers

Abstract

An experimental study of power dropouts in the main mode of a nearly-single-longitudinal-mode GaAlAs semiconductor laser is presented. Knowledge of the statistics of main-mode power dropout interarrival times, depths, and widths is necessary to estimate the performance of a communication system using such laser diodes. We found that at a typical laser operating bias ( <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">I/I_{th} = 2.1</tex> ), the mean dropout width was 1.8 ns, dropout depths were exponentially distributed, and dropouts falling below 90 percent of the average main-mode power occurred at a rate of <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1.5 \times 10^{3}</tex> s <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">-1</sup> . Also, the rate of dropouts falling below 90 percent of the average main-mode power was found to increase substantially near mode hops, sometimes by several orders of magnitude.