Comparison of Timing Jitter in External and Monolithic Cavity Mode-Locked Semiconductor Lasers

Dennis J. Derickson, University of California - Santa Barbara
P. A. Morton, University of California - Santa Barbara
J. E. Bowers, University of California - Santa Barbara
R. L. Thornton, Xerox Research Center, Palo Alto, CA

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Copyright © 1991 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.105704.

NOTE: At the time of publication, the author Dennis Derickson was not yet affiliated with Cal Poly.

Abstract

A comprehensive timing jitter comparison is made for mode-locked semiconductor lasers using active, passive, and hybrid mode-locking techniques in both external and monolithic cavity configurations. Active mode locking gives the lowest residual rms timing jitter of 65 fs (150 Hz-50 MHz), followed by the hybrid and passive mode-locking techniques. It is found that monolithic cavity devices with all active waveguides have higher timing jitter levels than the comparable external cavity case.