Kato Masao, Fujiura Kazuo, Kurihara Takashi
NTT Photonics Laboratories, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, 3-1 Morinosato, Wakamiya, Atsugi, Kanagawa 243-0198 Japan.
Appl Opt. 2005 Mar 1;44(7):1263-9. doi: 10.1364/ao.44.001263.
A simple technique for converting a continuous-wave laser beam into a stable Lorentzian pulse train with a high repetition frequency is demonstrated experimentally. We generated transform-limited pulses of up to 40 GHz, which were composed of higher-order sidebands produced by a Fabry-Perot resonator integrated with an electro-optic phase modulator (EOM). The rf power supplied to the EOM determines the pulse width in the pulse train. This approach enables the pulse width to be continuously tuned from 2.1 to 7.0 ps at the same repetition frequency without any wavelength shift. Furthermore, we experimentally evaluated the stability of the pulse train's amplitude and obtained stable bit-error-free operation at 9.95 GHz.