Theoretical and experimental study of passive mode-locked optoelectronic oscillators

We present a theoretical and experimental study of passively mode-locked optoelectronic oscillators that generate a single-cycle pulse train with an autonomous envelope-carrier phase locking. The theoretical study is performed by developing a numerical simulation. A good agreement is achieved between the theoretical and the experimental results. We theoretically study the effect of the periodic frequency dependence of the dispersion coefficient on the generation of a single-cycle pulse train with an autonomous envelope-carrier phase locking. The timing jitter is experimentally measured by performing a spectral analysis of the pulse train. The spectral analysis suggests a timing jitter of about 5 ps by using an integration bandwidth of 100 Hz to 1 MHz. The measured jitter is compared to the result of the numerical simulation and to an analytical expression. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America