Abstract

It has been demonstrated experimentally that an input data stream can be used to mode-lock a fiber laser, thus providing an efficient all-optical method for clock recovery.¹-³ In the experiments, the incoming data pulses passed along a length of dispersion shifted fiber (DSF) that formed part of the ring laser cavity. The laser and signal wavelengths were chosen such that they straddled the zero dispersion point of the DSF, so that little walk-off occurred during propagation. In this manner, the two signals interacted through cross-phase modulation, producing sufficient phase modulation to mode-lock the ring laser cavity.

© 1996 Optical Society of America