Control of spiky emission from a two-component heterojunction laser

A machine experiment was used to analyze the operating regimes of a two-component heterojunction laser in the range of unstable states under "hard" switching-on conditions. The dependences of the characteristics of a self-modulation process on the currents in the isolated parts of the laser were determined. Calculations and experiments revealed a region of "self-modulation bistability." The application of an external synchronizing signal resulted in generation of exactly periodic continuous trains of spikes of about 100 psec duration and 0.1–1.2 GHz repetition frequency. The promising nature of the use of such trains in determination of the pass band of fast-response photodetectors was demonstrated.