Bandwidth enhancement and the flattening of a chaotic laser with a microring resonator

Opt Express. 2025 May 5;33(9):19535-19545. doi: 10.1364/OE.557459.

Abstract

We propose and experimentally demonstrate what we believe to be a novel scheme for bandwidth enhancement and flattening of a chaotic laser with a microring resonator. By leveraging the multi-beam interference effect within the MRR, the multiple chaotic laser exhibited improved bandwidth and power spectrum flatness. With a feedback strength of 6 and a laser bias current of 11.8 mA, the chaotic laser with a power spectrum that extends to 22.65 GHz within -3 dB is experimentally achieved. Additionally, we investigated the impact of the different feedback strengths and bias currents on the bandwidth and flatness of the chaotic laser. Finally, we investigated the correlation between the two channels, which can produce single-channel chaotic lasers with correlations below 0.25 over a wide range. This method offers promising chaotic light sources for applications in chaotic distributed fiber optic sensing, secure communication, and chaotic LIDARs.