Measurement of the stimulated carrier lifetime in semiconductor optical amplifiers by four-wave mixing of polarized ASE noise

Author

Hunziker, Guido ; Paiella, Roberto ; Vahala, Kerry J. ; Koren, Uzi

Author_Institution

Dept. of Appl. Phys., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

Volume

9

Issue

7

fYear

1997

fDate

7/1/1997 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

907

Lastpage

909

Abstract

We present a simple experiment aimed at measuring the stimulated carrier lifetime in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA´s). The technique relies on polarization-resolved nearly degenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) of a laser source with an amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise source. The method can quickly characterize the bandwidth performance of active layers for application in a cross-gain or cross-phase wavelength converter.

Keywords

carrier lifetime; laser noise; light polarisation; multiwave mixing; quantum well lasers; superradiance; SOA; active layers; amplified spontaneous emission noise source; bandwidth performance; cross-gain wavelength converter; cross-phase wavelength converter; four-wave mixing; laser source; polarization-resolved nearly degenerate four-wave mixing; polarized ASE noise; semiconductor optical amplifiers; stimulated carrier lifetime; Charge carrier lifetime; Four-wave mixing; Laser noise; Noise measurement; Optical noise; Optical polarization; Semiconductor device noise; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Wavelength measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.593343

Filename

593343