Generation of low jitter and discrete tunable dual-wavelength optical pulses at arbitrary repetition rates

Abstract

A novel and simple method to generate low timing jitter and discrete tunable dual-wavelength optical pulses at arbitrary repetition rates is demonstrated in this paper. Two multiple quantum wells distributed feedback laser diodes, were used as the external seeding sources to inject the external photons into a gain-switched Fabry-Perot laser diode. The output wavelengths can be tuned discretely to coincide with any two lasing modes in the gain spectra range of the Fabry-Perot Laser diode, and the output side mode suppression ratio was better than 25 dB. Moreover, the timing jitter of optical pulses was reduced from 1.89 ps to 0.83 ps. It was empirically found that the lowest timing jitter operation occurred when the injected light wavelength is 0.2–0.3 nm shorter than the locked mode of the Fabry-Perot laser diode. To our knowledge, this is the first report of using two DFB laser diodes as a seeding source to reduce pulses jitter and select lasing dual-wavelength simultaneously.