HIGH-POWER ULTRAFAST LASER-DIODES

Compact and efficient sources of high-power ultrafast optical pulses are needed to incorporate high-speed optical information processing techniques into future photonic networks. In this paper, several ultrafast optical pulse generation techniques utilizing external cavity semiconductor lasers are described. These techniques include active mode locking, passive mode locking, hybrid mode locking, and several chirp compensation techniques. Utilizing these techniques, optical pulses of 200 fs in duration with over 160 W of peak power have been generated making these pulses both the shortest and most intense ever generated with a semiconductor injection diode laser system. These pulses have been used to study the ultrafast amplification characteristics of semiconductor lasers. The results presented here reveal the nature of the effects which dominate the pulse shaping mechanisms in external cavity hybrid mode-locked diode lasers.