Polarization switching dynamics of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser subject to negative optoelectronic feedback

Abstract

Using the extended spin-flip model, we theoretically investigate the polarization switching dynamics of a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser subject to negative optoelectronic feedback. The results show that when the laser operates at two different the spin-flip rates, the feedback intensity and delay time have great influence on polarization switching dynamics. At a slow spin-flip rate, with the increase of feedback intensity, switching current increases linearly, that the X polarization mode is compressed is contrary to the reported results based on isotropic optical feedback. The reason may be due to the fact that the negative optoelectronic feedback improves the X polarization mode threshold; the effect of delay time will vary with feedback intensity. At a fast spin-flip rate, the effect of feedback strength is different from at a slow spin-flip rate, the switching point current undergoes a process in which the current increases first and then decreases gradually, the switching point current is more sensitively dependent on the feedback strength; while effect of the delay time is similar to that at a slow spin-flip rate. In addition, we find that the spontaneous emission noise has a great influence on polarization switching dynamics.

Tunable and broadband microwave frequency combs based on a semiconductor laser with incoherent optical feedback

“…Under external disturbances, such as optical injection, optical feedback, and optoelectronic feedback, semiconductor lasers (SLs) can behave in diverse nonlinear dynamical states including period, multiple-period, chaos, frequency locking, regular pulsing, quasi-periodic pulsing, chaotic pulsing, etc. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] The nonlinear dynamics of SLs have been extensively studied and can be applied in optical chaotic communications, [14,15] random number generation, [16][17][18][19] all-optical frequency conversion, [20] radioover-fiber transmission, [21] and laser chaos-based lidar, [22] radar [23] and sensors. [24] Recently, the application of the nonlinear dynamics in SLs has been extended into the generation of microwave frequency combs (MFCs), and some schemes have been successfully proposed and investigated.…”