ABSTRACT
Directly modulated (DM) semiconductor lasers are compact, low-cost trans-
mitters for both digital and analog photonic communication systems. How-
ever, their use in high-performance analog photonic systems is limited by
several performance issues listed in Table 3.1. As shown in this table, optical
injection-locking (OIL) systems can improve a host of fundamental limitations
of directly modulated lasers and links: single-mode performance and side-mode
suppression [1], enhanced bandwidth and relaxation oscillation frequency
[2-4], suppressed nonlinear distortion [5,6], reduced relative intensity noise
[6-10], reduced chirp [11-13], increased link gain [14], and near-single-side-
band modulation [15]. In addition to improving the performance of optical
communication links, injection-locked laser systems have many other unique
properties. These properties make OIL attractive for applications such as
optical frequency reference generation [16], phased-array radars [17], phase
modulation [18], and optical signal processing [19], among others.
