For the generation of optical mm-waves many schemes have been investigated19 because of its increasing technical interest for the wireless local ioop. Simple beating of two different laser lines yields high flexibility, the excessive phase noise, however, is a drawback. Nearly all methods for pulse generation are based on RF injection into single or two mode DFB lasers or Fabry Perot lasers. The tunability ofthese mm-sources is rather limited. The RF power in some cases exceeds 25 dBm, so that the generation of the optical mm-waves becomes quite costly. Our method relies on two dc-biased DFB lasers. The output of one of them (master laser) is injected via an isolator into a second DFB laser (slave laser): Under these conditions output power oscillations ofthe slave laser can be created of nearly arbitrary repetition frequency up to the THz range with high modulation index, high output power and very low phase noise. The additional continuous tunability makes this method attractive for a very flexible and low cost optical mm-wave generation.

Date Published: 4 December 1998
PDF: 6 pages
Proc. SPIE 3491, 1998 International Conference on Applications of Photonic Technology III: Closing the Gap between Theory, Development, and Applications, (4 December 1998); doi: 10.1117/12.328712

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3491:
1998 International Conference on Applications of Photonic Technology III: Closing the Gap between Theory, Development, and Applications
George A. Lampropoulos; Roger A. Lessard, Editor(s)