Mutual injection locking of an erbium-doped fiber laser and a fiber-pigtailed Fabry-Perot laser diode

Mutual injection locking of a fiber-pigtailed Fabry-Perot laser diode (FPLD) and a closed-loop erbium-doped fiber-amplifier-based laser (EDFL) system are studied. A single FPLD longitudinal mode can be lasing in the EDFL-FPLD link, with a reduced linewidth of <0.017 nm and an improved sidemode-suppressing ratio of 50 dB. The FPLD's optimized current range is below threshold within 10%, and its required feedback-injecting power is 12.4 microW (corresponding to 0.03% of the EDFL output power). The maximum detuning ranges of the current and temperature of the FPLD that preserve the narrow linewidth and the highest sidemode-suppressing ratio of the EDFL-FPLD link are 2.4 mA and 2.2 degrees C, respectively. The power dissipated by the EDFL-FPLD link is 20% more than that of the free-running EDFL.