Characteristics of a high-speed passively mode-locked surface-emitting semiconductor InGaAs laser diode

We have studied the performance of the recently demonstrated high-speed passively mode-locked 980-nm vertical cavity diode lasers (pulsewidth down to /spl tau//sub p//spl sim/15 ps, repetition rate up to 15 GHz) by investigating the dynamics of the saturable p-i-n multiple quantum well InGaAs absorber. The impact of the absorber on the noise characteristics of these new compact short pulse sources is also reported.