Phase noise and jitter reduction by optical feedback on passively mode-locked quantum-dot lasers

The noise properties of the pulse trains of passively mode-locked 40GHz quantum-dot lasers subject to optical feedback are investigated in detail. Five different feedback regimes are discovered and the clearly identified regime of resonant optical feedback is further examined. The feedback parameters yielding minimum phase noise are determined. Here, the radio-frequency (RF)-line-width is reduced from its original value by 99% to 1.9 kHz. The corresponding pulse-to pulse jitter of 23 fs is a record low value for passively mode-locked 40 GHz quantum-dot lasers. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.