Generation of picosecond electrical pulses with the aid of injection lasers

An injection laser was used to generate, for the first time, electrical pulses with a leading edge shorter than 15 ps and an amplitude in excess of 1.1 V. This was done employing optoelectronic pulse shapers made of semiconductors and operating on the basis of their photoconductivity. The source of ultrashort optical pulses was a three-component Q-switched AlGaAs/GaAs heterojunction laser emitting pulses of 5 ps duration and 50 pJ energy. Ultrashort electrical pulses were recorded using an S9-9 Sigma sampling oscilloscope with an extremely wide band and with a rise time of the transient characteristic amounting to about 20 ps.