Novel polarization controller based on injection-locked vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser

Abstract

A novel polarization controller using the transverse mode switching of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) induced by injection locking is proposed. The operating principle is based on an all-optical inverter using transverse mode switching of an ellipticalshaped VCSEL keeping a stable polarization state. We carried out the modeling based on a multi-transverse-mode rate equation analysis, exhibiting the potential of high-speed polarization control at 5 Gbps.

Modeling of All-Optical-Signal Processing Devices Based on Two-Mode Injection-Locked Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Laser

“…1) Some device applications of VCSELs have been studied for use in all-optical signal processing, which include an optical inverter, a limiter, a 2R/3R regenerator, a buffer memory, and a polarization controller. [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12] We have proposed an optical regenerator based on the transverse mode switching of a two-mode VCSEL with injection-locking 5,6) and presented some experimental results on the VCSEL-based inverter operation using a long wavelength VCSEL. [7][8][9] The nonlinear transfer function in input-ouput characteristics of VCSEL-based inverter provides the signal regeneration function with waveform inversion experimentally.…”

All-optical regenerator with re-polarization function based on dual optical injection VCSEL

“…Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers have been attracting much interest with various unique features such as small footprint and low power consumption [1]. Some device applications of VCSELs have been studied for use in all-optical signal processing, which include an optical inverter, a limiter, a 2R/3R regenerator, a buffer memory, polarization controller and so on [2,3,4,5,6]. We have proposed and demonstrated an optical regenerator based on the transverse mode switching of a two-mode VCSEL with injection locking.…”

“…The nonlinear transfer function in input-output characteristics enables us to reshape the degraded input signal at 1 Gbps. We also proposed and modeled a polarization controller using the inverter, which gives us polarization control behavior at 5 Gbps for randomly polarized input signals [6]. However, the operating speed is limited by the relaxation oscillation frequency and modulation bandwidth of VCSELs.…”