Ultra-Fast Semiconductor Laser Sources

The chapter focuses on ultra-fast light sources for achieving small footprint and lower-power-consumption optical transceivers and covers various important light sources such as directly-modulated diode lasers with high optical-gain materials, low chirp externally-modulated diode lasers, and ultra-fast diode lasers with new structure and modulation scheme. The chapter starts with an in-depth theoretical treatment of key characteristics and dependences, illustrates typical realizations of ultra-fast diode lasers and integrated laser-modulators, and includes relevant operation and performance characteristics as well. In response to strong demand for datacom and access network applications selected variants of edge emitting transmitters are presented with particular emphasis on spectral and bandwidth efficiency.