Impact of saturable absorption on performance of optical clock recovery using a mode-locked multisection semiconductor laser

• Published in: IEEE journal of quantum electronics Vol. 40; no. 9; pp. 1177 - 1185
• Main Authors: HONGCHUN BAO, YANG JING WEN, SR, LIU, Hai-Feng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY IEEE 01.09.2004; Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Absorption; Clock recovery; Clocks; Exact sciences and technology; Extinction; Extreme values; Fiber nonlinear optics; Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications); High speed optical techniques; Laser cavities; Laser mode locking; Laser optical systems: design and operation; Lasers; Nonlinear optics; Optical crosstalk; Optical signal processing; Optics; Physics; Resonators, cavities, amplifiers, arrays, and rings; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor lasers; laser diodes; Timing jitter; Timing jitter; Optical injection; Radiofrequency spectra; Saturable absorbers; Semiconductor lasers; Saturable absorption; Laser cavities; Mode locked laser; Experimental device; Experimental study; Laser diodes; Clock recovery
• ISSN: 0018-9197; 1558-1713
• DOI: 10.1109/JQE.2004.833237

This paper investigates the impact of saturable absorption (SA) on the performance of optical clock recovery using a mode-locked multisection laser diode. Optical clock at 40 GHz is recovered from the multisection laser with SA section operated under a range of bias conditions. The dependence of extinction ratio and timing jitter of the recovered clock on required optical injection power, data rate detuning, and mark ratio is also evaluated under these operation conditions. The experimental results show that strong SA effect in laser cavity improves extinction ratio and suppresses timing jitter of the recovered clock, while weak or no SA effect in laser cavity offers clock recovery with larger date rate detuning range defined by timing jitter and less dependence on the variation of data mark ratio for extremely low mark ratio.