Noise-induced oscillations in fluctuations of passively mode-locked pulses

We study the fluctuations of pulses in mode-locked lasers using the statistical light-mode dynamics approach. The analysis is based on a decomposition of the laser waveform into three parts: solitary pulse, intracavity noise continuum, and local overlap. We discover significant features in the fluctuation dynamics, beyond those known in existing theories that disregard the continuum component of the waveform, most notably oscillations in the autocorrelation functions of the pulse power and frequency parameters, and an enhancement of the phase jitter diffusion constant. The theoretical results are corroborated by numerical simulations. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America