Dynamics of optical injection in an external cavity based FP-LD for wide tunable microwave signal generation

In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of optical injection in an external cavity based Fabry-Pérot laser diode (ECFP-LD) for wide tunable microwave signal generation. The ECFP-LD is a specially designed FP-LD that has a self-locked single dominant mode. The injected beam power is varied to analyze the dynamics of optical beam injection on the ECFP-LD. The ECFP-LD shows the interesting behavior of red-shift followed by hopping to another self-injected mode equivalent to FP-LD external and internal cavity modes separation, which provides the fine and coarse tuning of the self-injected mode. The optical beating of the injected beam and the self-injected mode, whether it is the fine red-shifted self-injected mode or the hopped self-injected mode equivalent to the external or internal cavity mode separation, provides a wide tunable range of microwave generation. We obtained fine tuning of 3 GHz for every self-injected mode, and coarse tuning of 15 GHz and 150 GHz, which is equivalent to the free spacing tuning of the external cavity (0.12 nm) and internal FP-LD cavity (1.17 nm), with change in the power of the injected beam. The maximum coarse tuning range is about 3.72 nm, and the corresponding beating frequency tuning range is 330 GHz. Hence, a wide tunable microwave frequency can be obtained by optical beating of the shifted/hopped self-injected mode and the injected beam.