DYNAMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF BISTABLE LASER-DIODES

A stability analysis of bistable laser diodes, which gives a first ana lytical explanation of the recently observed high-speed bistable switc hing and self-pulsation, is presented by introducing two key parameter s, It is shown that switching and self-pulsation are associated with t wo time scales, Turn-on and turn-off dynamics can be characterized by two different sets of eigenvalues which are used to analytically expla in the switch-off and switch-on transients observed in experiments, It is also shown that the gain function profile can significantly affect the performance of self-pulsation operation of bistable laser diodes, The analysis also proves that the existence of two critical points ha s an important effect on the switching time if switching occurs around one of them, The results of the present analysis agree well with thos e of an exact numerical simulation, In addition, the analysis can be a pplied to study dynamic characteristics of a bistable laser diode (BLD ) with other more complicated structures such as distributed feedback (DFB) laser diodes, multiquantum-well (MQW) laser diodes, etc.