An eXtreme Chirped Pulse Oscillator (XCPO) implemented with a Theta cavity and based on a semiconductor optical
amplifier (SOA) is presented for generating 10ns frequency-swept pulses and 3.6ps compressed pulses directly from the
oscillator. In this experiment, we show the two distinct characteristics of the XCPO which are the scalability of the
output energy and the mode-locked spectrum. The laser cavity design allows for low repetition rate operation <100MHz,
as well. The cavity, significantly, reduces nonlinear carrier dynamics, integrated self phase modulation (SPM), and fast
gain recovery in an SOA. Due to the laser's ability to generate directly frequency-swept pulses from the oscillator, this
oscillator can be used for high speed frequency-swept optical coherence tomography (OCT) and time-stretched photonic
analog to digital converters (P-ADC).
A proposed method, called "eXtreme Chirped Pulse Amplification(X-CPA)", to overcome the limitation of small storage energy of semiconductor optical amplifiers is demonstrated experimentally and theoretically. Results show an efficient energy extraction, a nonlinear suppression, and an excellent optical signal-to-noise ratio. In addition, we built an all-semiconductor X-CPA system using a highly dispersive chirped fiber Bragg grating which possesses 1600ps/nm with 6nm bandwidth at 975nm which generates sub-picosecond optical pulses with >kW record peak power output at 95MHz.
Spectrally resolved interferometry combining up-chirped and down-chirped pulses allows for millimeter range
resolution in laser ranging applications. Key in our approach is the use of temporally stretched optical pulses of 5
nanoseconds in duration. These stretched pulses were obtained from a femtosecond semiconductor mode-locked laser
and were up-chirped and down-chirped using a chirped fiber Bragg grating and recombined to realize spectral
interferometry. This approach provides a means to achieve the high pulse energies required for a laser radar application
which are easy to achieve using nanosecond pulses but maintains the high spatial resolution associated with
femtosecond optical pulses.
A hybridly modelocked grating-coupled surface-emitting laser (GCSEL) with pulse duration 2.8psec at 980nm is demonstrated. The unpumped grating section of the GCSEL is used as a saturable absorber to generate pulses with a 535MHz repetition rate. The peak power of 0.31W and a spectral bandwidth of 1.1nm are obtained.
We demonstrate an external cavity, active mode-locked GCSEL. The optical pulse duration from the actively mode-locked oscillator is 22.6ps and a 3 dB optical spectrum bandwidth is 0.07nm at 976nm. The average power from the oscillator is 0.72mW and its peak power is 108mW. The amplification characteristics of a GCSOA, optically injected with a continuously operated external cavity GCSEL, are also demonstrated. Despite the observation of lasing from the device, injection locking can be performed using an external source. At 4A peak current injection, 375mW output is achieved with 12mW injection.
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