Measurement and simulation of the turn-on delay time jitter in gain-switched semiconductor lasers

The turn-on delay time jitter of four different unbiased gain-switched laser types was determined by measuring the temporal probability distribution of the leading edge of the emitted optical pulse. One single-mode 1.5- mu m distributed feedback laser and three multimode Fabry-Perot lasers emitting at 750 nm and 1.3 mu m were investigated. The jitter was found to decrease for all lasers with increasing injection current. For multimode lasers it decreases from 8 ps excited slightly above threshold down to below 2 ps at three times the threshold current. The jitter of the distributed feedback (DFB) laser is a factor of 3-5 larger than the jitter of the three multimode lasers. A model for predicting the turn-on delay time jitter is presented and explains the experiments quantitatively.>