Bandwidth limited picosecond optical pulse generation from actively mode-locked AlGaAs diode laser

Abstract

A simple configuration made of a conventional AlGaAs diode laser without antireflection coating combined with an external reflector and an optical etalon was proved to be practically feasible to generate bandwidth limited mode-locked optical pulses of 30 ps duration by synchronous modulation at the external cavity mode interval. Generated optical pulse shape was found to be Lorentzian rather than Gaussian for the first time, based on the measurements of both the s.h.g. correlation method and the ultrafast streak camera.