  The generation of optical pulses at ultra low bias level, thus low energy
cost, is explored in a commercial microcavity semiconductor laser in view of
testing the principle of energy efficient information encoding in potential
integrated schemes. Sequences of regular, highly nonlinear pulses with
acceptable amplitude stability are obtained from a commercial device as
potential sources of bits where the information is added by post-treatment
(pulse removal). A discussion on the energy expenditure per bit is offered,
together with the optimal frequency for pulse generation, which is found to lie
slightly below the above-threshold value declared by the manufacturer.
