Interaction of phase and amplitude shaping in an external cavity semiconductor laser

Ultrashort pulse generation with semiconductor lasers poses a promising alternative to currently available femtosecond laser sources like solid state and fiber lasers. Semiconductor devices can be produced inexpensively, are energy efficient and their wavelength can be designed by band gap engineering. Furthermore they feature a tunable repetition rate. Yet pulse duration and peak power of those devices limit their potential for applications so far. However, recent research demonstrated a reduction of the pulse width from 534 fs (full width half maximum) to 216 fs by shaping the spectrally resolved spectral phase and amplitude inside the cavity. The utilized system consisted of a mode-locked edge emitting semiconductor laser diode, a spatial light modulator inside the external cavity to carry out the pulse shaping and an evolutionary algorithm to optimize the phase and amplitude. Here we present the results of separate phase and amplitude shaping as well as their interaction if optimized together at the same time. Furthermore we demonstrate the flexibility of the phase and amplitude shaping with respect to each other. Thus we expect of our system to enable adaptation to a resonator external dispersion.