Generation of a dual optical frequency comb by large signal modulation of a semiconductor laser

In this paper, we present and theoretically investigate a simple and power efficient scheme for dual optical frequency comb generation residing on a single directly modulated semiconductor laser driven by two superimposed current waveforms. Our detailed model estimates dual combs comprising teeth pairs within 20 dB margin spanning up to 116 GHz with power per teeth pair up to 8.8 µW. In addition, we report dual combs with 40 GHz span comprising ultraflat teeth pairs, with flatness of the order of 1 dB.