Influence of optical feedback on harmonic pulsating solutions of long-cavity mode-locked VECSELs

Adrian Bartolo (1) , Thomas E. Seidel (2) , Nathan Vigne (3) , Arnaud Garnache (3, 4) , Gregoire Beaudoin (5) , Isabelle Sagnes (5) , Guillaume Huyet (1) , Massimo Giudici (1) , Julien Javaloyes (6) , S. Gurevich (2) , Mathias Marconi (1)

1 INPHYNI - Institut de Physique de Nice
2 WWU - Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster = University of Münster
3 IES - Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes
4 PhoTéra - Photonique et Térahertz
5 C2N - Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies
6 UIB - Universitat de les Illes Balears = Universidad de las Islas Baleares = University of the Balearic Islands

We analyse the effect of optical feedback on the dynamics of external-cavity mode-locked semiconductor lasers operated in the long cavity regime. Depending on the ratio between the cavity round-trip time and the feedback delay, we show experimentally that feedback acts as a solution discriminator that either reinforces or hinders the appearance of one of the multiple coexisting mode-locked harmonic solutions. Our theoretical analysis reproduces well the experiment. We identify asymmetrical resonance tongues due to the temporal symmetry breaking induced by gain depletion.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Adrian Bartolo, Thomas E. Seidel, Nathan Vigne, Arnaud Garnache, Gregoire Beaudoin, et al.. Influence of optical feedback on harmonic pulsating solutions of long-cavity mode-locked VECSELs. 2021. ⟨hal-03103531⟩