Subpicosecond soliton compression of gain switched diode laser pulses using an erbium-doped fiber amplifier

Combining a gain-switched semiconductor laser, an erbium-doped fiber amplifier, and two cascaded fibers for compression, optical pulse trains of 0.63 ps FWHM in autocorrelation trace, with certain suppression of wing structures, were successfully generated. Evaluated energy in each pulse was >or=17 pJ. A computer simulation of the soliton-effect compression of gain-switched pulses containing substantial chirps was performed. Optimization of the pulse train by simply controlling the DC bias current on the master distributed-feedback (DFB) laser was clarified.<
>