Generation of Widely Tunable Picosecond Pulses With Large SMSR by Externally Injecting a Gain-Switched Dual Laser Source

The authors demonstrate a procedure of generating picosecond optical pulses that are tunable over a wide wavelength range (65 nm) and have very high spectral purity side-mode suppression ratio [(SMSR)>60 dB]. The large tuning range is obtained by employing external injection into a gain-switched source containing two Fabry-Pe/spl acute/rot lasers. The use of a widely tunable Bragg grating at the output improves the SMSR such that it exceeds 60 dB over the entire tuning range.