Time delay signature elimination of chaos in a semiconductor laser by dispersive feedback from a chirped FBG

Time delay signature (TDS) of a semiconductor laser subject to dispersive optical feedback from a chirped fibre Bragg grating (CFBG) is investigated experimentally and numerically. Different from mirror, CFBG provides additional frequency-dependent delay caused by dispersion, and thus induces external-cavity modes with irregular mode separation rather than a fixed separation induced by mirror feedback. Compared with mirror feedback, the CFBG feedback can greatly depress and even eliminate the TDS, although it leads to a similar quasi-period route to chaos with increases of feedback. In experiments, by using a CFBG with dispersion of 2000ps/nm, the TDS is decreased by 90% to about 0.04 compared with mirror feedback. Furthermore, both numerical and experimental results show that the TDS evolution is quite different: the TDS decreases more quickly down to a lower plateau (even background noise level of autocorrelation function) and never rises again. This evolution tendency is also different from that of FBG feedback, of which the TDS first decreases to a minimal value and then increases again as feedback strength increases. In addition, the CFBG feedback has no filtering effects and does not require amplification for feedback light. (C) 2016 Optical Society of America