Optical Transmitters: Single
mode SC lasers 3.2
Week 3
Lecture 7: 23 January 2020
Amol Choudhary
Review from Last Class
• Spontaneous vs stimulated
• Laser materials
• Gain
• Feedback
[Link]
Longitudinal modes
• Longitudinal MODES
• What is the spacing between
these frequencies?
• FSR=c/2ngL (very important
equation)
• Only these frequencies can
get gain
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Laser Structures
• Planar waveguide: asymmetric mode, 1x100 um
• Ridge waveguide laser δn~0.01
• Buried Heterojunction δn~0.1, 2x1 um
• What can be practical challenges?
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Single mode
• Multi-mode (longitudinal): each mode propagates differently in fiber:
limits bitrates
• Even if 3~4 modes oscillate: 600GHz ~ How many nm is that?
• What if, we did not have the loss to be constant across frequencies?
• You want the power in sidemodes to be >30dB lower than the main
mode. Mode Suppression Ratio (MSR)= Pmm/Psm
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Distributed Feedback Lasers (DFB)
• Use Bragg Reflection for feedback:
• Strongest reflection at m=1
• If neff is 3.3, what is the grating period? Fabricated by holographic
techniques
• For Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR): Essentially, maximum reflection
at lB
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How to increase MSR?
• Increase Gain Margin: excess gain required by sidemode to reach
threshold
• Safe is 3-5 cm-1
• For directly modulated DFB Lasers this is >10cm-1
• Use phase shifted DFB, which have grating shifted by a quarter wavelength in
middle: gives 90 degrees phase shift.
• Use gain-coupled DFB, where gain and modes vary periodically
• Fabrication is complex
• Holographic
• E-Beam
Raith
Coupled-Cavity Semiconductor Lasers
• There is an external cavity
that tunes the laser
AR Coating
wavelength: 50 nm for ECL
• Now the cavity is much
longer.
• What happens to the FSR?
• Non-monolithic
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Tunable Semiconductor Lasers
• To overcome stability issues and tunability issues: Multisection DBR
• Inject current to control all three sections.
• How?
• Carrier induced refractive index change-> phase change and Bragg
shift
• Various other approaches Active Phase Wavelength
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Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Lasers
• What happens when the gain
medium is only 1 micron thick? (Gain
bandwidth is ~10 THz
• Single mode waveguides!!
• VCSELs 3-10 um
• Emit light normal to the active plane
• Circular beam
• Low costs! Quantum Wells
• Issue: low powers. Why?
• Initially multimode, now singlemode,
by current and beam aperture
limiting Fiber-Optic Communication Systems, Govind P Agrawal, [Link], [Link]
Optical Transmitters: Rate
equations, modulation BW,
linewidth 3.3
Week 4
Lecture 8: 27 January 2020
Amol Choudhary
Review from Last Class
• FSR
• Lasing frequency determined by the resonator and the Gain
• How can we get single mode?
• VCSELs
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CW characteristics
Number of Photons Rate of Spontaneous photons in the laser mode
• Rate Equations Photon lifetime
Number of electrons
Injected Current Cavity lifetime
• Rate of Stimulated Emission:
• Photon lifetime:
P-I curve
• There is a threshold current
• Why do we need temperature
control of laser diode?
• It increases with Temperature
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Steady state
• Below Threshold, Gtp <1: P=0: N=tc*I/q
• At threshold Roundtrip gain=1, Gtp =1, population gets Clamped to N=Nth
• Show that threshold current is:
• For I>Ith
Power extraction
• Can think about this:
• Gives:
• Mostly we care about slope efficiency:
• Another definition:
Temperature dependence
• Auger recombination dominates then:
• Auger recombination increases exponentially with temperature
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Modulation bandwidth
• The modulated current is given by:
• (no need for derivation, understand the assumptions)
• Actual gain reduces due to physical effects such as spatial hole
burning, spectral hole burning, Two photon absorption etc
• Amplitude modulation leads to phase modulation. There is an
amplitude-phase coupling factor that increases linewidth (bc)
• Small signal modulation
• Biased Above threshold
• Laser output is modulated sinusoidally
3-dB bandwidth
• Can define the transfer function: Relaxation Oscillation frequency
Damping coefficient
• What happens to H at low frequencies?
• At Relaxation oscillation?
• At High Frequency?
• For most lasers GR<<WR:
• f3dB=
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Relative Intensity Noise
• Even at steady state, the laser has intensity, phase and frequency
fluctuations
• Spontaneous Emission, electron hole recombination (shot noise)
• Spontaneous photons add noise to the coherent field, fast rates:
fluctuations over 100 ps
• What effect does Intensity fluctuation have?
• What effect does phase fluctuation have?
RIN spectrum
• Add noise terms
• Intensity correlation:
RIN peak
• RIN is given by:
• RIN drops on increasing the power
• SNR is proportional to power (at low levels)
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Linewidth
• The laser spectrum is Lorentzian with a Linewidth is given by:
• bc is typically 4-8 for InGaAsP, lower for multiple quantum well
structures
• On increasing the power linewidth should decrease
• On increasing L, linewidth decreases quadratically.
• At higher powers , linewidth is found to increase
• Current fluctuations
• 1/f noise
• Nonlinear Gain
• Index change Fiber-Optic Communication Systems, Govind P Agrawal