Ultrahigh-speed laser modulation by injection locking

Publisher Summary Injection locking refers to a state when the frequency and phase of an oscillator, referred to as the slave oscillator, are locked through direct coupling or injection of another oscillator, referred to as the master oscillator. This chapter reviews theoretical and experimental results and the physical origin of injection-locked lasers with particular emphasis on its dynamic performance. Some performance improvements include ∼20-dB increase of both spur-free dynamic range (SFDR) and radio frequency (RF) link gain, one order of magnitude increase in resonance frequency, as well as ∼20-dB reduction in laser noise. A record-high modulation bandwidth of 66 GHz is attained by injection locking a 10-GHz vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL). These properties can lead to an increase of the transmission distance or bandwidth. New applications, techniques, and performance of injection locking in wavelength-division multiplexed systems are discussed for metropolitan area networks and passive optical network applications. The characteristics of a directly modulated laser can be fundamentally changed when it is locked to a master laser through coherent nonlinear interactions, resulting in superior device performance for various applications.

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