Dynamic and Spectral Features of Semiconductor Lasers

This thesis is divided into two main subject areas: the fluctuation properties of state of the art semiconductor lasers and the improvement of modulation and fluctuation properties in these devices through a technique called detuned loading. The discussion of fluctuations in lasers is a topic as old as the device itself, and much of the pioneering work in this field was done in the sixties. Surprisingly, however, several new chapters in this field are being written, because of certain pecularities only recently observed in semiconductor lasers. Chapters 2 and 3 of this thesis will consider these pecularities, which, as it turns out, are quite important in many potential system applications of these devices. One of the driving forces behind the development of semiconductor lasers has been their application as sources and local oscillators in optical communication systems. In general such applications require lasers which have low phase and intensity noise, and which can be modulated at high data rates. As is often the case, these requirements are to a certain extent mutually exclusive. Chapter 4 introduces a technique which is an exception to this rule. It relies upon the semiconductor laser physics which produces the fluctuation abnormalities discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. The technique can be used to improve modulation speed while simultaneously reducing noise as compared to the conventional device.