Femtosecond optical pulse generation from semiconductor traveling-wave amplifiers: techniques and applications

Abstract

erated optical pulses are 207 femtoscconds and 1 58 watts, respectively, making these pulses both the shortest andmost intense ever generated from an all semiconductor diode laser system. The nonlinear gain dynamics of theamplification process in these devices are also investigated using standard pump-probe techniques. The resultsyield information as to how the gain dynamics effects the pulse shaping mechanisms during modelocking and thepotential difficulties which arise in compressing and amplifying femtosecond optical pulses with semiconductortraveling wave optical amplifiers.Applications utilizing these optical pulses will also be discussed, with an emphasis on optical clock distribu-tion. In this type of application, we take advantage of the large output power and low timing jitter provided bythe modelocked semiconductor laser system.2. Femtosecond Pulse Generation with Traveling Wave Amplifiers.Compact and efficient sources of high repetition rate, high peak power ultrashort optical pulses are needed toreplace the standard ultrashort optical pulse generation schemes due to their relatively large size and poor wallplug efficiency. It has been previously demonstrated that an external cavity hybrid mode locked semiconductorlaser system has been able to produce optical pulses as short as 460 fsec in duration with over 70 watts of peakpower I 11. In this section, a modification of this system which incorporates a four prism sequence to compensate