All-fiber self-injection seeding for optical timing jitter reduction in a chirp compensated gain-switched DFB laser

We demonstrate an original all-fiber self-injection seeding technique based on a noninterferometric reflector for the optical timing jitter reduction in a chirp compensated gain-switched Distributed FeedBack (DFB) laser. Two experiments, at 2.5 and 5 GHz show standard deviations of the optical timin g jitter of 0.28 ps and a reduction factor of 17 in the best case. The self -injection seeding sensitivity to polarization effects and to modulating fr equency changes was measured in terms of standard deviation. A final experi ment at 10 GHz, with no external feedback, shows an optical timing jitter d own to 0.4 ps due to a time dynamics of spontaneous emission fluctuations s lower than the pulse period.