A paper “A Monolithically Integrated Racetrack Colliding-Pulse Mode-Locked Laser With Pulse-Picking Modulator” by Professor Peter Delfyett‘s Ultrafast Photonics group, in colaboration with Infinera, made the front cover of IEEE JQE August Issue.
This work presents a novel InP-based Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) that monolithically integrates a racetrack mode-locked laser with a pulse-picking modulator and an optical amplifier. In addition, monolithic integration of an intra-cavity modulator in the racetrack cavity is used for hybrid mode-locking. Such PICs can be used as compact and stable sources of short pulses with low power consumption. Generation of widely-spaced combs that show long-term stability using such chip-scale devices without the need for active stabilization open new applications in spectroscopy, optical metrology and microwave photonics. Furthermore, on-chip repetition rate reduction and optical amplification enable nonlinear techniques such as soliton compression and super-continuum generation to be implemented using chip-scale devices.
