Controllable spiking patterns in long-wavelength VCSELs for neuromorphic photonics systems

Multiple controllable spiking patterns are obtained in a 1310 nm Vertical Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (VCSEL) in response to induced perturbations and for two different cases of polarized optical injection, namely parallel and orthogonal. Achievement of reproducible spiking responses in VCSELs operating at the telecom wavelengths offers great promise for future uses of these devices in ultrafast neuromorphic photonic systems for non-traditional computing applications.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, journal submissio

Mode-Locking in Semiconductor Fabry-Pérot Lasers

We theoretically study the dynamics and the mode-locking properties of semiconductor Fabry-Perot lasers with intracavity saturable absorber by using a travelling-wave model and a time-domain description of the optical response of the semiconductor materials. Our description enables us to incorporate important features as for instance the abrupt spectral variations of the absorption in the saturable absorber. We analyze the influence of several key parameters that affect the stability of the mode-locking regime and show that this modelling approach can be used, upon proper fitting of the material parameters, for optimization of the design of semiconductor mode-locked lasers.Peer Reviewe

Excitability and optical pulse generation in semiconductor lasers driven by resonant tunneling diode photo-detectors

We demonstrate, experimentally and theoretically, excitable nanosecond optical pulses in optoelectronic integrated circuits operating at telecommunication wavelengths (1550 nm) comprising a nanoscale double barrier quantum well resonant tunneling diode (RTD) photo-detector driving a laser diode (LD). When perturbed either electrically or optically by an input signal above a certain threshold, the optoelectronic circuit generates short electrical and optical excitable pulses mimicking the spiking behavior of biological neurons. Interestingly, the asymmetric nonlinear characteristic of the RTD-LD allows for two different regimes where one obtain either single pulses or a burst of multiple pulses. The high-speed excitable response capabilities are promising for neurally inspired information applications in photonics. (C) 2013 Optical Society of AmericaFCT [PTDC/EEA-TEL/100755/2008]; FCT Portugal [SFRH/BPD/84466/2012]; Ramon y Cajal fellowship; project RANGER [TEC2012-38864-C03-01]; Direcci General de Recerca del Govern de les Illes Balears; EU FEDER funds; Ministry of Economics and Competitivity of Spain [FIS2010-22322-C02-01

Spectral delay algebraic equation approach to broad area laser diodes

In this study, we discuss an efficient modeling approach for the simulation of broad-area laser diodes. Our method is based on folding the longitudinal propagation dimension into time delays which extend to the lateral dimension and to the influence of diffractive terms the idea of mesh decimation as it is discussed in . We compare the results of the dynamics obtained with our improved model that consists of coupled delay algebraic equations with the results of a standard traveling wave description in the cases of straight current stripes as well as in the important configuration of high-power tapered antireflection coated devices. We obtain an excellent agreement and an improvement of the integration time between one and two orders of magnitudes which may alleviate in some cases the necessity of using complex parallel codes