| The speed and performance of today's high end computing and communications systems have placed difficult but still feasible demands on off-chip electrical interconnects. However, future interconnect systems may need aggregate bandwidths well into the terahertz range thereby making electrical bandwidth, density, and power targets impossible to meet. Optical interconnects, and specifically compact semiconductor mode-locked lasers, could alleviate this problem by providing short pulses in time at 10s of GHz repetition rates for Optical Time Division Multiplexing (OTDM) and clock distribution applications. Furthermore, the characteristic spectral comb of frequencies of these lasers could also serve as a multi-wavelength source for Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) applications. A fully integrated mode-locked Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) is proposed as a low-cost high-speed source for these applications. The fundamental laser platform for such a device has been developed and a continuous-wave version of these lasers has been fabricated and demonstrated excellent results. Output powers close to 60mW have been obtained with very high beam quality factor of M2 < 1.07.; The mode-locked laser utilizes a passive mode-locking region provided by a semiconductor saturable absorber integrated together with the gain region. Such an aggressive integration forces the resonant beam in the cavity to have the same area on the gain and absorber sections, placing high demands on the saturation fluence and absorption coefficient for the saturable absorber. Quantum Wells (QWs), excitons in QWs and Quantum Dots (QDs) have been investigated as possible saturable absorbers for the proposed device. QDs have been found to have the lowest saturation fluence and total absorption, necessary to meet the mode-locking requirements for this configuration. The need to further understand QDs as saturable absorbers has led to the development of a theoretical model on the dynamics of this quantum system. The model agrees very well with the experimental data obtained and predicts the design of unassisted ultrafast QD saturable absorbers, without the need to incorporate high concentrations of non radiative recombination centers by either ion-implantation or low temperature growth. |
