We’d like to wish a big congratulations to Finbarr O’Callaghan who successfully defended his thesis at Tyndall recently.
Finbarr O’Callaghan thesis is entitled “Dynamics of coupled modes in two-section semiconductor lasers with saturable absorption".
The abstract of the thesis is as follows:
Semiconductor lasers have the potential to address a number of critical applications in advanced telecommunications and signal processing. These include applications that require pulsed output that can be obtained from self-pulsing and mode-locked states of two-section devices with saturable absorption. Many modern applications place stringent performance requirements on the laser source, and a thorough understanding of the physical mechanisms underlying these pulsed modes of operation is therefore highly desirable.
We present experimental measurements and numerical simulations of a variety of self-pulsation phenomena in two-section semiconductor lasers with saturable absorption. Our theoretical and numerical results will be based on rate equations for the field intensities and the carrier densities in the two sections of the device, and we establish typical parameter ranges and assess the level of agreement with experiment that can be expected from our models. For each of the physical examples that we consider, our model parameters are consistent with the physical net gain and absorption of the studied devices.
The first system that we consider is a two-section Fabry-Pérot laser. This example serves to introduce our method for obtaining model parameters from the measured material dispersion, and it also allows us to present a detailed discussion of the bifurcation structure that governs the appearance of self-pulsations in two-section devices. We present two distinct examples of experimental measurements from dual-mode two-section devices. In each case we have found that single mode self-pulsations evolve into complex coupled dual-mode states following a characteristic series of bifurcations. We present optical and mode resolved power spectra as well as a series of characteristic intensity time traces illustrating this progression for each example. Using the results from our study of a two-section Fabry-Pérot device as a guide, we find physically appropriate model parameters that provide qualitative agreement with our experimental results. We highlight the role played by material dispersion and the underlying single mode self-pulsing orbits in determining the observed dynamics, and we use numerical continuation methods to provide a global picture of the governing bifurcation structure.