Reduction of power fluctuations in ultrafast optically time-division-multiplexed pulse trains by use of a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror

The development of optical-pulse sources for ultrafast optically time-division-multiplexed data links is limited by coherent interaction among neighboring pulses, which results in intensity fluctuations. We describe a source of 2.5-GHz 0.9-ps 1550-nm pulse trains with peak-to-pedestal ratio /spl ges/32 dB. When multiplexed to 160 GHz, the root-mean-square power fluctuations are 2.1%. To achieve this performance, a nonlinear amplifying loop mirror is employed to reduce the pulse width by 49%, increase the peak-to-pedestal ratio by /spl ges/14.1 dB and decrease the fluctuations by 7.8 dB. These results are shown to agree with a derived calculation.