The quantum limit of timing jitter in actively mode-locked soliton fiber lasers

Summary form only given. The demand for stable, actively mode-locked fiber laser (AMLFL) sources with extremely small timing jitter has been driven by the development of high-speed optical communications systems and high-resolution optical sampling. Timing jitter degrades bit-error rates in the former and leads to sampling errors in the latter. AMLFL's have been shown to exhibit very low timing jitter whose performance is limited by the phase noise of the external oscillator. In this paper, we determine the quantum-limited timing jitter of the AMLFL operating at GHz repetition rates and how it can be reduced.