Ultra-low jitter mode-locking of Er-fiber laser at 10 GHz and its application in photonic analog-to-digital conversion

We report the 10 GHz mode-locking of a fiber-laser with timing-jitters as low as 16 fs (/spl Delta/f=100 Hz-100 kHz), and amplitude-jitters of 0.058%. From the spur-free-dynamic-range (SFDR) measured for a signal (at 2.49 GHz) sampled with the mode-locked pulse train, we estimate an analog-to-digital conversion resolution of 8 SFDR-bits at 10 GSPS.