Abstract

Recently, subpicosecond optical pulses from laser diodes (LDs) have been necessary for ultrahigh-speed transmission, optical and electrooptical sampling systems, spectroscopy, etc. The most studied method to generate such pulses is the erbium-doped fiber laser.^[1] However, with this method it is difficult for some applications to change the repetition rate of the pulses. Another common method under study is the gain switching scheme which has the advantage of controllability of repetition rate, but the disadvantage of a pulse width of several ten-picoseconds or more. While compression schemes for gain switching pulses using linear compression fibers and soliton compression fibers have been successfully proposed, the generated pulse is not always transform limited, and has pedestals.^[2]

© 1995 Optical Society of America