Analysis and measurement of the external modulation of modelocked laser diodes (relative noise performance)

The measurement of the relative intensity noise (RIN) of a ridge waveguide laser and a distributed feedback laser under CW, external cavity, direct modulation, and modelocking conditions is presented. The purpose is to determine the relative noise performance of modelocked laser diodes. The results indicate that the RIN of modelocked lasers are comparable to CW lasers but lower than both external cavity lasers (optimized for modelocking but without the applied RF) and directly modulated lasers; the difference can be as much as 5 optical dB. The microwave carriers produced optically by the direct modulation and modelocking of laser diodes are also compared. The comparison determines that modelocked lasers produce less noisy and more RF power efficient microwave carriers. However, no difference in microwave linewidth is detected within the limit of the resolution bandwidth of the detection system.