Influence of electrical excitation on the optical pulse generated by gain-switched semiconductor lasers

Abstract

Gain switched semiconductor laser system is a simple method to generate ultrashort optical pulses. It has been widely used in optical fiber communication, precision machining, precision measurement, biomedical and other fields. In order to advance the research on gain-switched semiconductor lasers, the effects of external electrical excitation signals on the optical pulses output from the gain-switched semiconductor lasers (GS-LD) were studied by simulation and experiment. The research included the influence of bias current, power and frequency of the modulation signal on the optical pulse, respectively. In addition, the reasons for these influences were analyzed. Selecting the appropriate bias current and modulation signal parameters can make the laser output high-quality picosecond pulses with narrow pulse width and small tailing. The results and analysis presented in this paper have implications for the study of the optimal operation state of gain-switched semiconductor lasers and subsequent research on it.