Poincare Sphere Method for Optimizing the Wavelength Converter Based on Nonlinear Polarization Rotation in Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

Author

Zhao, Shuang ; Wu, Chongqing ; Cheng, Mu ; Li, Zhengyong ; Feng, Zhen

Author_Institution

Inst. of Opt. Inf., Beijing Jiaotong Univ., Beijing, China

Volume

45

Issue

8

fYear

2009

Firstpage

1006

Lastpage

1013

Abstract

We present a Poincare sphere (PS) model to optimize the wavelength converter (WC) based on nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA). The PS method is applied to describe the variations of ellipticipy angle and azimuth of SOA output state of polarization (SOP) induced by polarization-dependent gain (PDG) and polarization-dependent phase shift, respectively. The theoretical results reveal that the polarization dependence of the linewidth enhancement factor (LEF) and the variation of SOA gain are significant factors for the NPR. The evolutions of output SOP on the PS under quasi-continuum condition have been demonstrated experimentally. The experimental results agree well with our analysis.

Keywords

Poincare mapping; laser beams; light polarisation; optical rotation; optical wavelength conversion; semiconductor optical amplifiers; Poincare sphere method; linewidth enhancement factor; nonlinear polarization rotation; optical wavelength converter; polarization-dependent phase shift; quasicontinuum condition; semiconductor optical amplifier; Nonlinear optics; Optical modulation; Optical polarization; Optical refraction; Optical signal processing; Optical variables control; Optical wavelength conversion; Optimization methods; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Ultrafast optics; Linewidth enhancement factor (LEF); Poincare sphere (PS); nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR); semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs); wavelength converter (WC);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JQE.2009.2017209

Filename

5165104