Interaction of a bistable injection laser with an external optical cavity

Abstract

Experimental results on interactions of a bistable laser with an external optical cavity are presented. Switching of a bistable injection laser can be done by varying the amount of optical feedback. The optical switching is accompanied by a switching of the voltage across the absorber section. This can be utilized in digital optical disk readout. A bistable laser with an antireflection coating on one facet is more suitable for this task. No pulsations can be observed in a bistable laser with optical feedback if the absorber section is biased with a constant current source; but when it is biased with a voltage source, pulsation occurs at the external cavity round trip frequency. This indicates that even though the intrinsic absorption of the semiconductor material does not saturate easier than the gain, the presence of such absorptions in GaAs lasers can still produce pulsations when the electrical aspect is taken into account.