Chaos laser chips with delayed optical feedback using a passive ring waveguide

We report a novel chaos semiconductor laser chip in which a distributed feedback (DFB) laser, two semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and a photodiode (PD) are monolithically integrated with a passive ring waveguide. The ring-type structure with the two separate SOAs achieves stronger delayed optical feedback compared to previous chaos laser chips which use linear waveguide and facet-reflection. The integrated PD allows efficient detection of the optical signal with low optical loss. A rich variety of dynamical behaviors and optical signals can be selectively generated via injection currents to the two separate SOAs. In particular, the strong optical feedback makes possible the generation of strong broadband optical chaos, with very flat spectrum of ±6.5 dB up to 10 GHz. The stability and quality of the chaotic mode is demonstrated using strict statistical tests of randomness applied to long binary sequences extracted by sampling the optical intensity signal.