1

Experimental Static and Dynamic Characterization of Injection Locked Lasers

Arsalan Saljoghei
lasers magnitude and phase respectively along with the carrier rate equation [2], [7], [8].

AbstractThis paper presents a theoretical study of injection locking of semiconductor lasers, the study comments on stability and the locking range as function of injection power and frequency detuning. To verify the theory a Fabery Perot was experimentally injection locked using a CW DFB laser, the numerically calculated results along with experimental findings on stability, locking range and dynamics of the injection locked laser are presented in this paper.

= + =
2 2 ()

(1) (2)
2

= +

(3)

I.

INTRODUCTION

PTICAL INJECTION LOCKING (OIL) of semiconductor lasers has provided for simultaneous realization of many enhancements such as single-mode operation with high side-mode supersession, increased relaxation oscillation frequency, increased modulation bandwidth, reduced nonlinearities, reduced chirp and increased link gain [1], [2]. Its well established that a variety of external perturbations such as optical injection, modulation of pumping current and external optical feedback can cause instabilities in the lasers output and yield oscillatory or chaotic output [3]. In variety of system three universal routes from regular to chaotic motion have been observed, first being the perioddoubling route which refers to successive period doubling bifurcations which will occur as one of the system parameters is varied where the transition to chaos takes place after an infinite number of doublings spaced closer to each other each time, this route to chaos has been observed in Fabery Perot lasers [4], the second route is the quasiperodic route which results from series of Hopf bifurcations where the first Hopf bifurcation generates limit cycle dynamics, the second Hopf bifurcation creates periodic as well as quasiperiodic behavior and the third Hopf bifuracation gives rise to occurrence of chaos, experimental studies of DFB lasers have shown a quasiperiodic route to chaos [3] and finally the third route to chaotic dynamics has been identified to be the intermittency route [5]. In this paper we present theoretical and experimental analysis of locking, stability and dynamical properties of injection locked semiconductor lasers.

Where is normalized as 2 = () where () is the photon number, is the linear gain coefficient, is the slave lasers carrier number, is the carrier number at threshold, the coupling rate which is defined as the rate injected photons enter the slaves cavity and distribute themselves along the cavity length L [6], [1], is the magnitude of the injected master field just inside the facet, determined by the reflectivity of the lasers facets, is the phase difference between the master and slave laser = , is the linewidth enhancement factor which significantly determines the locking range and stability of the injection locked laser [5] [9], is the detuning frequency between the master and slave laser and defined as = . , and are the current density, carrier recombination rate and photon decay rate respectively. The model used here neglects the existence of side modes in the slave laser during injection locking and assumes single mode operation, although side modes are sometimes excited in the oscillation of a semiconductor laser subjected to optical injection even if it operates at a single mode [10], the existence of these side modes bring about implications such as mode hops [11] and limitation of master lasers detuning range [1]. The assumption of single mode operation can be applied to DFB lasers under injection locking but it may bring about a level of implications between theory and experiments in the case of Fabery Perot lasers [10]. Another parameter which has been neglected in this model is the gain saturation term which also plays an important role in stability as it damps the instabilities of the injection locked lasers and enhances the locking range [5]. A. Steady State Solutions Its possible to solve the steady state solutions to rate equation (1)-(3) using time-dependent differential equation solutions such as finite-difference methods, but its more desirable to come upon a quick solution without having to solve the three coupled, non-linear differential equations [6]. Using the three equations provided in [7] the steady state value for the filed magnitude (A0), phase (0) and carrier number (N0) are derived. Firstly solving for the free-running field magnitude Afr in (3) we can set the above threshold

II. BASIC CONCEPTS In this study the theory compiled and derived by K Lau. [6] for optical injection locking was chosen as the basis of our work. The theory used here focuses on effects of ultrastrong injection and its implications in theory, thus the effects of spontaneous emission are neglected and assumed negligible. The theory governing OIL presented here is composed of three differential equations describing the slave

2 carrier number 0 0 = 0 obtaining:

= 0 1 = 0 2 (4) = 0 = 20 ( 20 )

= 0 0 = 0 /0 1 = 2 = + 2 0 (12)

Using (4) and solving for steady state values of injectionlocked laser, the following is obtained: 2 0 =
2 0 0 1+

(5)
0

0 = 1 0 =
2 0

1+2

Where mXY describes the magnitude in which X changes as Y is perturbed and z=Ainj/A0. Inverting the matrix the magnitude of the frequency response takes the following form: =

(6) (7) =
3 + 2 ++

(13)

To solve for the steady state values one can use the coupled non-linear equations and choosing a value for the injection ratio defined here as the ratio of the injected power to the free running slave laser power just inside the slaves cavity [6] and a detuning frequency. But they tend to be unwieldy due to the coupled nature of their solutions. Another technique would be to assume one of the steady state values and solve for the other two, one choice can be the steady state phase since we know the approximate bounds of the phase across the locking range to be -/2 cot-1 from negative to positive frequency detuning edges [6], [1], [9], as shown in figure. 1. Following the determination of a value for the steady state phase, a injection ratio must be assumed and steady state equations should be used to solve for A0, N0 and inj. Knowing 0 and substituting (7) into (5) yields: 3 0
2

= + + = + + = + = / =

(14)

C. Locking Range and stability In the model presented in this paper the stability conditions that dictate the locking range are based on three constraints. The first constraint deals with (6), where a real solution for the steady state phase can only be found if the absolute value of the arcsine term is not greater than one which leads to the following constraints on the phase value: 1 1
2 2

0 2 0

2 0

(15)

0 = 0 (8)

Whose roots can be solved by a root-solving program, (7) will solve for N0 and (6) can be rearranged as following: = 1 + 2
0

The second constraint is found in (7) where the carrier number should not increase more then the threshold, otherwise it would results in an unstable gain as can be seen in figures. 2(c)-(d), Thus:
2

sin0 + 1

(9)

(16)

B. Dynamic Solutions The rate equations presented earlier can be linearized by applying small-signal perturbations around its steady state solutions in the form of: = 0 + () (10)

Substituting (15) and (16) yields to the constraints on the steady state phase introduced in section II-A, which when substituted in (9) yields Mogensens locking range [9]. The third constraints can be found in the dynamic solutions for the frequency response, mainly the determinant of (13): = 3 + 2 + + (17)

Where X0 represents the steady state variables A0, 0, N0 and J0 and X represents the small signal magnitudes: A, , N, J, and s represent the complex time-harmonic angular frequency. The linearized equation can be placed in a matrix as follow: + + 0 + 0 = 0

(11)

When the real parts of the roots of D(s) become positive the solution becomes unstable which shrinks the stable locking range on the positive side and according to K Lau. [1] this condition determines the boundary between stable locking and chaos. Lastly at high injection ratios and negative detuning frequencies the slave steady state power can be higher then the free running value this translates into a reduced negative detuning frequency at these regions for regions where Ao/ Afr > 1, as depicted in figures. 1, 2 (b).

3 Using the Matlab code found in [6] (included in AppendixA), the model presented here and the laser parameters listed in table-I, the determined locking range as function of injection ratio and detuning frequency was numerically calculated and shown in figure. 1. The shaded region in figure. 1 depicts the numerically calculated stable injection locking region with respect to the offset frequency and injection ratio [6], [1]. The unlocked region points to a situation where the detuning frequency becomes too large between the master and slave laser and results in injection locking not occurring, number of authors identified this region with presence of FWM [10], F. Mogensen et al. [9] call this area the Locking/Unlocking region operation in this region results in intensity switches between locked and unlocked state in a periodic manner where after each period the phase changes 360 o accompanied by a damped relaxation oscillation of the intensity. It should be noted that map depicted in figure 1, does not fully account for the different dynamics that could occur in such applications. Semiconductor lasers in general and fabery perot lasers under optical injection locking have been found to be rich in various dynamics depending on injection ratio and detuning frequency [5], [10], [11], [12]. Experimental study of OIL fabery perot lasers identified operations such as stable injection locking, periodic oscillations at the injection-modified carrier-filed resonance frequency, period doubling and quadrupling, chaotic dynamics, four wave mixing and mode hopping to other longitudinal modes, were all observed under different injection conditions [3]. Identification of such dynamics requires rigorous experimental and theoretical studies [5], [9], [10],[11], [12], [3], [14], [13], [4]. In OIL experiments aimed at identifying various dynamics, the optical spectrum of the injection locked slave laser is studied using a high resolution Optical spectrum analyzer or heterodyne/homodyne detection [12] in order to identify emerging dynamics as either injection ratio or detuning frequency is altered. Emerging dynamics such as limit cycles which lead to period doubling and quadrupling are identified in the optical spectrum as side peaks separated from the injection locked mode by the resonance frequency of the injection locked FP slave laser [11], [3], [14], temporal analysis in such region shows Injected lightinduced pulsation (ILIP) at frequency close to the relaxation resonance frequency of the injected laser [9]. Period -doubling features were identified to be bumps emerging between the peaks observed in limit cycles dynamics where in presence of spontaneous emission are made broadened,
TABLE I INJECTION-LOCKED LASER PARAMETERS Symbol g Nth Jth J N P L r Value 1539.844 4.7104 2.0107 3 5.0561016 5.2136Jth 1 500 500 0.3 183 Units nm 1/s 1/s 1/s 1/ns 1/ns m 1/ns

Fig. 1. Calculated locking map, as function of detuning frequency and injected ratio, the shaded region points to the stable locking region and the region named n.s. (not stable) determines the boundary between stable locking and chaos. The arrows identify the bounds of locking.

making identification of these features complicated experimentally [14], [13], [4]. Period quadrupling features have been identified as emergence of two single peaks between limit cycle peaks [15]. Emergence of many broad spectra in the spectrum is signature of system going through chaos, a fully developed chaos in the system can be identified by domination of the spectrum by a broad pedestal and emergence of strong secondary peaks [10], [11], [12], [3], [14], [13], [4]. Identification of different dynamics through theoretical analysis can be done by carrying stability tests on the developed model describing the injected locked semiconductor laser, the stability of the system can be viewed using numerically obtained bifurcation and phase plane diagrams as one of the system parameters is varied or Fourier transform can be used to view the spectrum of the model developed under different driving conditions [5], [11], [12], [3], [14], [13], [4], [15], these methods can simplify the identification of dynamics such as period doubling or quadrupling as spontaneous emission which distorts the features associated with each can be neglected . In experiments previously carried on FP and DFB lasers under injection locking the route to chaotic dynamics was found to be through period doubling for FP lasers and quasiperiodic dynamics for the DFB lasers [11], [12]. Thus we can conclude that analysis which leads to results shown in figure. 1 do not fully and accurately describe various dynamics in interest. Having neglected the gain saturation term in model presented in this study, one would expect the emergence of multiple chaotic regions and stable operation through reverse bifurcation with respect to the detuning frequency across the locking map at certain injection ratios [5] and the existence of regions with limit cycle, period doubling and quadrupling dynamics which would help to identify the route and true boundaries of chaotic regions.

Fig. 2. Numerically calculated locking maps, showing dynamic values for (a) resonance frequency and steady state values for (b) normalized filed, (c) carrier density and (d) phase.

III. ENHANCED CHARACTERISTICS A. Resonance frequency enhancement One of the advantages of strong OIL is the ability to increase the injection locked lasers relaxation oscillation frequency, with enhancements above 100GHz using strong injection locking [1], [16]. The determinant of (17) can be used to approximate the resonance frequency: 2 (The roots of (17) will be a pair of complex conjugate roots and a real negative root, where as free running laser the imaginary part of complex conjugate pair should give the resonance frequency) , Where the first term is the resonance attributed to the dynamic coupling of photons and carriers and approximates to the same physical origin of the free running slave lasers resonance frequency [1], Using (12) to expand the expression for the resonance frequency we can approximate the new resonance frequency as 2 = 2 + 2 . 0 Using the steady state condition of (2) a physical formula for R can be found to be: = 0 +
2

The value of this pole can be determined by fully expanding the determinant of (17), where its value can be found to be as follow:
2 = + 2 4 1

(19)

As it can be seen in (19) the larger the value of the resonance frequency a smaller value for the pole will result in a smaller 3-dB bandwidth, therefore for a larger 3-dB bandwidth the value of C defined below must be maximized. 2 + 20 0 0 0 (20)

Thus it can be seen that C can be maximized through the increase of injection ratio (z) and increase of the slave filed A0 which can be achieved by negatively detuning the frequency difference between master and slave or applying a higher bias to the slave to obtain a higher free running power, C can also be maximized by using a laser with a lower mirror reflectivity which will increase the photon decay rate P.

(18) IV. EXPERIMENTS The experimental apparatus used is presented in figure 3. The RF source connected to slave laser and photodiode at port 3 of the circulator was used to study the frequency response of the laser under free running and injection locked conditions using a network analyzer whose bandwidth was set to 20 GHz. The OSA used had a resolution of 0.05nm which limited the identification of some dynamics. Both lasers were current and temperature controlled, the master was biased to achieve maximum power output and the slave was biased such to match of the FPs side modes to the DFBs lasing mode. Figure. 4(a) represents the spectrum of the FP at desired conditions and 4(b) represents the injection locked spectrum.

Using the Matlab code found in [6] (included in AppendixA) and Parameters stated in table I, number of injection locked laser characteristics were simulated, figure. 2 present the results of these simulations which help a better visualization of emergence of enhanced characteristics through the presented theoretical explanations. Figure. 2(a) represents the resonance frequencies as function of injection ratio and detuning frequency. The resonance frequency enhancement is equal to the difference between the master lasers frequency and that of the slave lasers natural cavity mode frequency [7], this cavity mode is red shifted by parameter through first term of (18) [1], thus for increasing negative frequencies, the master laser approaches that of the cavity mode which results in a decrease in the resonance frequency enhancement, however in positive frequency detuning, the master laser moves in the opposite direction to cavity mode migration and as a result creating larger resonance frequency enhancements in the positive detuning edge as shown in figure 1. (a). B. Bandwidth Enhancement The OIL laser bandwidth is mainly determined by the firstorder pole frequency [1]. The value of this pole plays a key role in the size of the dip that occur between the DC and resonance, if this pole is small the dip between DC and resonance occur earlier leading to a poor 3-dB bandwidth.

Fig. 3. Experimental setup used in this study. PC: Polarization Controller, OSA: optical spectrum Analyzer, PD: Photo diode.

Fig. 4. Spectrum of the slave FP laser at desired bias current under (a) free running and (b) injection locking conditions.

As it can be seen in figure. 4 (b) the injection locking of FP achieved more than 40dB of side-mode suppression. The experimental threshold and bias currents of FP slave laser are the values stated in table-I, it should be noted other laser parameter shown in table-I were approximated and do not match those of the laser used in these experiments, thus a degree of uncertainty exist between simulations and experiments in this study, for better approximation between two, methods such as the FWM technique [12], [17] should be used to extract the physical parameters of the laser in question. Due to availability of one OSA during the related experiments, connections one and two to the optical circulator were constantly switched in order to study the spectrum of the DFB laser which was frequency detuned using temperature control, the stress caused to the fiber connectors induced a level of polarization mismatch between the master and slave which was not matched again at majority of occasions, thus the test conditions were not the same at different intervals. In identifying various dynamics experimentally we only used the optical spectrum of the injection locked laser, looking for key signatures describing the dynamics as previously described in section II-C, figure 5 shows some

Fig. 6. Experimentally obtained locking map. Region bounded by filled circles and red lines approximately depicts the boundary between locking and unlocking. Region between open diamonds and blue lines is the region where stable locking occurs. Region between filled squares and green lines shows the area where limit cycles were observed and in the area bounded by thick black lines chaos was observed.

relates to the increase of unstable region in figure 1. Region found to carry chaotic dynamics fully fell within unstable regions numerically calculated, although at injection ratio of -10.8dB it was followed by a quick switch to stable dynamics which can be explained as the occurrence of chaotic crisis [5]. Figure 7 presents the frequency response of the free running and injection locked FP laser at different injection ratios and various detuning frequency to keep the operation in stable region. As it can be observed the resonance frequencies increase as injection ratios increases these new resonances are located approximately between 11 to 16 GHz.

Fig. 5. Spectrum of injection locked laser at resolution of (0.05nm) under various injection or detuning frequencies showing properties of (a) stable locking, (b) emergence of limit cycle dynamics and (c) chaos.

Fig. 7. Frequency Responses as function of injection ratio

examples of the observed signatures used to identify the emergence of different dynamics. Figure. 6 depicts the experimentally obtained locking map, as function of detuning frequency with respect to the free running optical mode of FP slave laser and the injection ratio. In order to relate the numerically obtained results to that of experiments, we used the same notation used for the injection ratio in [6], which defines it as the ratio of power injected just inside the slave lasers cavity to that of the free running laser. Comparing figures. 6 and 1 it can be seen that the numerical results over estimate the bounds of the stable and locking regions, the experimentally determined stable region only matches that of numerical calculation between injection ratios of -2.6 to -6.6 dB, for the unstable regions we can see the regions bounded for occurrence of limit cycles in figure 6 only matches the unstable region in figure. -1 only for injection ratios between -6.6dB to -7.6dB where an increase of this region can be seen in figure 6 which

Comparing these resonance frequencies with those found numerically (figure. 2(a)) we see that they do not match each other, in regions that stability matches. Figure. 8 shows the effect of frequency detuning on lasers response, as it can be seen as the detuning is moved towards higher negative offset, the resonance decreases, this effect was explained in section III-A being due to the decrease between the red-shifted cavity mode and the master lasers frequency.

V. CONCLUSION This paper presented a theoretical analysis of injection locking of semiconductor lasers, the model only assumes the presence of one optical mode which under some conditions may over estimate the locking bandwidth and it also neglects the presence of the gain saturation term which acts as damping parameter on various unstable dynamics.

6
[5] Joachim Sacher, Dieter Baums,* Peter Panknin, Wolfgang Elsisser, and Ernst O. Gdbel, Intensity instabilities of semiconductor lasers under current modulation, external light injection, and delayed feedback The American Physical Society, Vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 1893-1905, Feb. 1992.

Theoretical analyses were presented to establish the bounds of locking and stability under injection locking as

Fig. 8. Frequency Responses as function of detuning frequency at injection ratio approximately equal to -5.6 dB.

function detuning frequency and injection ratio. Number of experiments and numerical simulations were carried to verify the theoretical analysis presented, it was found that the numerical simulations for stability did not fully match the experiments, firstly the bounds of stability region identified experimentally did not match the simulations as stability region had been over estimated in simulations, secondly the region bounded to have limit cycle dynamics present was not fully incorporated in unstable region of simulations similar to chaotic region identified, and lastly with non existence of gain saturation term we expected discontinuous unstable regions and stable regions at some injection powers but simulations results failed to present this parameter. Although it should be stated that the physical laser parameters used in numerical analysis apart from the injection/threshold current were approximated to the slave laser used and not physically extracted, the second parameter which might had introduced level of mismatch between analytical and experimental results can be the level of precession under which experiments were carried out.

VI. REFERENCES [1] E. K. Lau, L. J. Wong, and M. C. Wu, Enhanced modulation characteristics of optical injection-locked lasers: A tutorial, IEEE J. Sel. Topics Quantum Electron., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 618633, May/Jun. [2] C. H. Henry, N. A. Olsson, and N. K. Dutta, Locking range and stability of injection locked 1.54 m InGaAsP semiconductor lasers, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. QE-21, no. 8, pp. 11521156, Aug. 1985. [3] T. B. Simpson, V. Kovanis, A. Gavrielides and J.M. Liu, Mapping the nonlinear dynamics of a distributed feedback semiconductor laser subject to external optical injection, Quant. Elect. and Laser Science Conf., 1996, pp. 130. [4] T. B. Simpson, J.M. Liu, A. Gavirelides, V. Kovanis and P. M. Alsing, Period-doubling route to chaos in a semiconductor laser subject to optical injection, Appl. Phys. Lett. vol. 64, no. 26, pp. 3539-3541, June 1994.

[6] Erwin K Lau, High-Speed Modulation of Optical Injection-Locked Semiconductor Lasers, PhD. Thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2006. [7] Murakami, K. Kawashima, and K. Atsuki, Cavity resonance shift and bandwidth enhancement in semiconductor lasers with strong light injection, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 39, no. 10, pp. 1196 1204, Oct. 2003. [8] R. Lang, Injection locking properties of a semiconductor laser, IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. 18, no. 6, pp. 976983, Jun. 1982. [9] F. Mogensen, H. Olesen, and G. Jacobsen, Locking conditions and stability properties for a semiconductor laser with external light injection,IEEE J. Quantum Electron., vol. QE-21, no. 7, pp. 784793, Jul. 1985. [10] Junji Ohtsubo, Dynamics in Semiconductor Lasers with Optical Injection in Semiconductor Lasers (Stability, instability and Chaos), W.T Rhodes, Ed, 2 nd Ed, Berlin Heidlbery New York: Springer, 2008, pp. 147-163. [11] Kovanis, A. Gavirelides, T. B. Simpson and J. M. Liu, Instabilities and chaos in optically injected semiconductor lasers, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 67, no. 19, pp 2780-2782, Nov. 1995. [12] T. B. Simpson, Mapping the nonlinear dynamics of a distributed feedback semiconductor laser subject to external optical injection, Optical Communications, vol. 215, issue 1-3, pp. 135-151, Aug.2002. [13] V. Kovanis, A. Gavrielides, T.B. Simpson, J. M. Liu and P. M. Alsing, Chaos, Period-doubling and Reverse Bifurcations in a Optically Injected Semiconductor Laser, Nonlinear Optics: Materials, Fundamentals, and Applications, 1994, pp. 30-32. [14] T.B. Simpson, A. Gavrielides, V. Kovanis and P. M. Alsing, Period-doubling cascades and chaos in a semiconductor laser with optical injection, Physical Review A, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 4181-4185, May 1995. [15] Michael C. Pochet, Characterization of the dynamics of optically injected nanostructure lasers, PhD. Thesis, University of New Mexico, New Mexico, 2010. [16] E. K. Lau, X. Zhao, H.-K. Sung, D. Parekh, C. ChangHasnain, and M.C.Wu, Strong optical injectionlocked semiconductor lasers demonstrating > 100-GHz resonance frequencies and 80-GHz intrinsic bandwidths, Opt. Exp., vol. 16, no. 9, pp. 66096618, 2008. [17] Jia-Ming Liu and T. B. Simpson, Four-Wave Mixing and Optical Modulation in a Semiconductor Laser, IEEE Jour. Of Quant. Elect., Vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 957965, April 1994.