Highly nondegenerate four-wave mixing among subpicosecond optical pulses in a semiconductor optical amplifier

Author

Inoue, J. ; Kawaguchi, H.

Author_Institution

Fac. of Eng., Yamagata Univ., Japan

Volume

10

Issue

3

fYear

1998

fDate

3/1/1998 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

349

Lastpage

351

Abstract

We have demonstrated, for the first time, the highly nondegenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) among subpicosecond optical pulses in a 1.3-μm multiple-quantum-well (MQW) semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). We could directly measure the FWM signal in the output spectrum by current pulse pumping of the device. We achieved a high conversion efficiency of over 10% at a frequency conversion range of less than 1 THz. The limitation of conversion efficiency due to the gain saturation of the SOA was effectively overcome by using the short optical pulses.

Keywords

high-speed optical techniques; infrared sources; laser transitions; multiwave mixing; optical frequency conversion; optical phase conjugation; quantum well lasers; 1 THz; 1.3 mum; 10 percent; FWM signal; MQW semiconductor optical amplifier; conversion efficiency; current pulse pumping; frequency conversion range; gain saturation; high conversion efficiency; highly nondegenerate four-wave mixing; output spectrum; semiconductor optical amplifier; short optical pulses; subpicosecond optical pulses; Four-wave mixing; Frequency conversion; Nonlinear optics; Optical mixing; Optical pulses; Optical pumping; Pulse measurements; Quantum well devices; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stimulated emission;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.661406

Filename

661406