Compression and Reshaping of Gain-Switching Low-Quality Pulses Using a Highly Nonlinear Optical Loop Mirror Articles uri icon

publication date

  • March 2010

start page

  • 377

end page

  • 379

issue

  • 6

volume

  • 22

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 1041-1135

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1941-0174

abstract

  • This work presents an experimental study on the improvement of pulsed diode laser gain-switched (GS) optical sources where simultaneous compression and reshaping of the low-quality pulses obtained with this
    technique are reported. These effects are achieved using a highly
    nonlinear optical loop mirror (HNOLM) directly coupled to the diode
    laser source without any previous pulse conditioning. The HNOLM is based
    on the use of a microstructured optical fiber and a highly nonlinear
    semiconductor optical amplifier. This system is compact and robust. The
    pulses have been characterized through the evaluation of their
    autocorrelation traces and a study using a temporal information via
    intensity algorithm. Results show that the loop improves the quality of
    complex GS pulses in several aspects: they are compressed, their
    symmetry is improved, and the width and height of the pedestals that
    commonly appear accompanying GS pulses are reduced. The system proposed
    offers overall benefits in terms of reduced system complexity.