Short pulses from a synchronously pumped quantum dot laser

Summary form only given. In this paper, we show the generation of sub-10 ps optical pulses by optical synchronous pumping of a QD laser coupled to an external cavity. The QD laser is a ridge waveguide laser structure with a length of 1.7 mm and a mesa width of 5 /spl mu/m. In the active material, 7 layers of InAs QDs (dot coverage: 10/sup 11/ cm/sup -2/) are embedded in GaAs and are surrounded by an AlGaAs waveguide. This structure is pumped optically by 100 fs pulses from a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser (excitation wavelength: 800 nm, repetition frequency: 80 MHz) that is focused onto the ridge with a cylindrical lens. Together with the tunability of the emission wavelength such devices are promising candidates for fiber optic communication.