Shot-noise-limited VCSELs for high-speed fiber optic data transmission

Oxide-confined vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser diodes (VCSELs) are optimized for multi-Gbit/s data rate optical transmission systems. Noise characteristics and small-signal modulation response of high-performance transverse single- and multi-mode devices under different operation conditions are investigated. We demonstrate for the first time 12.5 Gbit/s data rate fiber transmission with a bit-error rate of better than 10 -11 for pseudo-random bit sequence signals over 100m multimode fiber and 1 km single-mode fiber. Maximum electrical and optical bandwidths obtained at 3 mA driving current are 12 GHz and 13 GHz, respectively. For pumping levels above 2.8 times threshold current, the relative intensity noise is below -150 dB/Hz up to 5 GHz for output powers of about 1mW. In detail, we investigate the low frequency intensity noise of high efficiency small area selectively oxidized VCSELs emitting in the fundamental transverse mode up to 7 times threshold current at room temperature and in multiple transverse modes up to 20 times threshold current. For low temperature operation quantum efficiency of the VCSEL is increased leading to photon- number fluctuations 1.4 dB below the shot noise limit. This is to our best knowledge the largest amount of squeezing ever reported for VCSELs.