Femtosecond pulse generation from external cavity diode laser based on self-mode-locking.

In this Letter, we report optical pulse generation from a single-section diode gain chip, employed in an external cavity geometry based on the self-mode-locking regime. The gain chip emits light at 1550 nm wavelength range. The external cavity is operated at various repetition rates, ranging from 1 to 2.5 GHz. An optical pulse width of approximately 650 fs is obtained by fitting a Lorentzian distribution. A low RF spectral width of 78.875 kHz is measured corresponding to a low pulse-to-pulse RMS timing jitter of 1.273 ps. This system paves the way towards ultra-compact, cost-effective, and chirp-compensated femtosecond laser pulse sources with adjustable repetition rates.