Optimized pulse source employing an externally injected gain-switched laser diode in conjunction with a nonlinearly chirped grating

Abstract

In this paper, we demonstrate the generation of transform-limited short optical pulses, which display excellent spectral and temporal qualities by employing a novel technology, based on an externally injected gain-switched laser in conjunction with a nonlinearly chirped grating. Using this technique, 3.5-ps optical pulses exhibiting a time-bandwidth product (TBP) of 0.45 are generated, which are suitable for use in high-speed 80 Gb/s optical time-division multiplexing (OTDM) communications systems. The numerical integration of a set of rate equations using suitable parameters for the devices used in the experiments were carried out to further confirm the feasibility of the proposed method for developing an optimized pulse source for high-speed photonic systems.