Rabi oscillations for subpicosecond pulses in quantum-well optical amplifiers: interplay of carrier heating, nonlinear, and spectral effects

Using the Foreman effective mass Hamiltonian for strained In_xGa_1-xAs--In_yGa_1-yAs_zP_1-z quantum wells, the propagation of subpicosecond pulses in a 1.55-μm optical amplifier was calculated. The multisubband carrier dynamics as well as the polarization dynamics were taken into account. Carrier heating and coherent light-carrier interactions as well as the interplay of these nonlinear processes and the amplifier dispersion are studied. Strong Rabi oscillations occur in the optical field of a propagated pulse, its frequency chirp, as well as in the carrier density and temperature. While the Rabi oscillation imposes negative frequency chirp and hence red-shifts the pulse spectrum, positive frequency chirp can occur due to the local gain dispersion, where the higher frequency components of the pulse have larger gain. Due to the Rabi oscillation, the spectrum of the amplified pulse is considerably distorted and sidebands emerge. For a linearly chirped input pulse, the spectrum of the output pulse can be either red-shifted or blue-shifted with respect to its center frequency, depending on its initial chirp. For strong pulse propagation, a pronounced pulse break up occurs when a 175-fs pulse propagates in the gain regime, while a significant pulse compression occurs when the pulse propagates at the transparency point.