Optical and RF stabilization of a coupled cavity colliding pulse mode-locked laser via four-wave mixing

Monolithic passively mode-locked semiconductor lasers are attractive as sources of high repetition rate pulses for many applications, particularly for high bit rate time division multiplexed communication systems, optoelectronic sampling systems, ultrafast A/D converters and for microwave signal generation [1]. However, due to lack of a stable frequency source in the cavity and with no synchronization from an external clock these passively mode-locked lasers suffer from large timing jitter [2].