Self-Pulsation in a Semiconductor Ring Laser

Abstract

Semiconductor ring lasers have many capabilities of realizing new functional devices, such as retiming circuits, logic devices or optical ring gyros. M. Ikeda et al. proposed self-detection method of lasing characteristics for semiconductor ring lasers without branching optical lasing power[1]. The lasing power and the line width as a function of the injection current have been measured with detecting the RF power by the terminal voltage change of a ring LD. In this paper, we demonstrate that semiconductor ring laser operates as Q-switched optical pulse generator. Q-switched lasers are very attractive sources in many applications such as optical communication system.