Wavelength-tunable nearly transform-limited pulses generated by self-injection seeding of a laser diode at an arbitrary repetition rate

A scheme to generate tunable picosecond pulses at 1.55 μm with an arbitrary repetition rate is developed. The self-injection seeded pulses are temporally compressed and are amplified to produce nearly transform-limited output. Throughout the tuning range of 13.16 mm, the pulsewidth and the time-bandwidth product are observed to be roughly constant at 5.9 ps and 0.6, respectively.