Self-Pulsation in a Semiconductor Ring Laser

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.