Pulsed laser sampling photon amplifier

The performance of semiconductor laser amplifiers can be significantly improved by injecting carriers with pulsed electric currents of subnanosecond duration. Pulsed operation is illustrated in a Fabry-Perot amplifier and in a traveling-wave amplifier. The resonant amplifier is most sensitive to an input light wave at the instant the carrier density is crossing over the critical region, giving a sharply pulsed sampling effect on the input light wave signal. Compared to a resonant amplifier operating at subcritical electron density, the pulsed amplifier gives much higher gain and peak power. In fact, pulsed operation of a resonant amplifier is also expected to give significantly higher gain than and about the same peak output power as a traveling-wave amplifier. Pulsed operation also improves the performance of a traveling-wave amplifier by attenuating its internally reflected waves.<>