All-Fiber Self-Injection Seeding for Optical Timing Jitter Reduction in a Chirp Compensated Gain-Switched DFB Laser

We demonstrate an original all-fiber self-injection seeding technique based on a noninterferometric reflector for the optical timing jitter reduction in a chirp compen sated gain-switched Distributed FeedBack (DFB) laser. Two experiments, at 2.5 and 5 GHz, show standard deviations of the optical timing jitter of 0.28 ps and a reduction factor of 17 in the best case. The self-injection seeding sensitivity to polarization effects and to modulating frequency changes was measured in terms of standard deviation. A final experiment at 10 GHz, with no external feedback, shows an optical timing jitter down to 0.4 ps due to a time dynamics of spontaneous emission fluctuations slower than the pulse period.