Suppression of mode partition noise in a multiwavelength semiconductor laser through hybrid mode locking

We demonstrate the suppression of intensity fluctuations, which are known as mode partition noise, in a multiwavelength semiconductor laser by using a hybrid mode-locking scheme. The laser design incorporates a saturable absorber and a gain-modulated semiconductor optical amplifier, along with spectral filtering, in an external cavity to achieve multiwavelength hybrid mode locking. The mode-locked laser produces an error-free (pulse Q>13) 300-MHz optical pulse train in each of three wavelength channels.