The Nyquist laser

Nyquist pulses, which are defined as impulse responses of a Nyquist filter, can be used to simultaneously achieve an ultrahigh data rate and spectral efficiency (SE). Coherent Nyquist optical time-division multiplexing transmission increases SE, but the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR) is limited by the amplitude of the original CW beam. To further improve transmission performance, here we describe a new pulsed laser that can emit an optical Nyquist pulse train at a repetition rate of 40 GHz. The Nyquist laser is based on a regeneratively and harmonically mode-locked erbium fiber laser that has a special spectral filter to generate a Nyquist pulse as the output pulse. The pulse width was approximately 3 ps, and the oscillation wavelength was 1.55 mu m. The spectral profile of the Nyquist pulse can be changed by changing the spectral curvature of the filter with a roll-off factor, a, between 0 and 1. A Fabry-Perot etalon was also installed in the laser cavity to select longitudinal modes with a free spectral range of 40 GHz, resulting in the suppression of the mode hopping in the regenerative mode locking. A numerical analysis is also presented to explain the generation of a stable Nyquist pulse from the laser. The Nyquist laser is important not only for the direct generation of high-OSNR pulses but also for scientific advances, proving that pulse shapes that differ significantly from the conventional hyperbolic-secant and Gaussian pulse shapes can exist stably in a cavity. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America