Using an injection-locked VCSEL to produce Fourier-transform-limited optical pulses

Abstract

In this Letter, we present Fourier-transform-limited, nanosecond scale optical pulses from a vertical cavity surface emitting laser (VCSEL) using injection locking with a narrow-band seed laser. We examine two different injection-locking architectures and show that we can achieve an effective injection-locking range of over 8 GHz with an extinction ratio of 20,000:1. These results indicate that injection-locked VCSELs could become a key component of large-scale photonic quantum networks. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America