Electrical clock recovery based on all-optical signal processing in a monolithic passively mode-locked laser diode

We have demonstrated an electrical clock recovery at 40 Gb/s direct from a monolithic passively mode-locked laser diode by all-optical signal processing without any additional optical-to-electrical conversion devices. Electrical clock recovery with a sufficiently large amplitude (>300 V
_pp
) and a low timing jitter (<0.5 ps) has been successfully achieved from return-to-zero (RZ) data signal, and from nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) data signal in combination with an all-optical NRZ-RZ converter