Picosecond optical pulse compression from gain-switched 1.3 μm distributed-feedback laser diode through highly dispersive single-mode fibre

The first demonstration to compress the linearly chirped optical pulses from a gain-switched distributed-feedback laser diode (DFB-LD) is described at 1.3 μm wavelength. By travelling through a highly dispersive single-mode fibre with 48 ps/nm normal dispersion, a 26 ps (FWHM) pulse having red-shift frequency chirping of 85 GHz (FWHM) is compressed to 8.3 ps with the time-bandwidth product of 0.71.