Integrated Optoelectronics Using Injection-Locked Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers.
Abstract
This Final Report, describes experimental, analytical and numerical investigations of injection locking in a vertical cavity surface emitting laser for applications which benefit from optical control of microwaves. It concentrates on strong injection locking, where the imposition of the external optical signal not only locks the slave laser to the injected signal but also modifies the dynamic characteristics of the coupling between the optical field and the gain medium. This can lead to unstable dynamics in a vertical cavity surface emitting laser, or other semiconductor laser, and the optical output can consist principally of two frequency components. The frequency separation between these two components can be tuned across a broad range. We have found that a conventional coupled equation model identifies all of the key phenomena that we observe in our data. Our data shows the particular laser that we studied had a very strong noise spectra and a polarization instability which would have kept it from many optical control of microwaves applications. However, these features are not intrinsic to vertical cavity surface emitting lasers. The ability to generate a tunable modulation with controlled output characteristics using such a compact optical source is very attractive. Further studies are required.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 10, 1997
- Accession Number
- ADA324777
Entities
People
- J. M. Liu
- T. B. Simpson