Ultrafast optical thresholding based on two-photon absorption GaAs waveguide photodetectors

Author

Zheng, Zhengguang ; Weiner, A.M. ; Marsh, J.H. ; Karkhanehchi, M.M.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, IN, USA

Volume

9

Issue

4

fYear

1997

fDate

4/1/1997 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

493

Lastpage

495

Abstract

We report measurements of the pulsewidth dependence of the two-photon absorption photocurrent in GaAs p-i-n waveguide photodetectors using subpicosecond optical pulses at 1.5 μm. For fixed pulse energy, the photocurrent is observed to depend linearly on the inverse of the optical pulsewidth. A subnanosecond electrical response is also observed. Our results show the feasibility of applying such devices for nonlinear processing in ultrafast optical code-division multiple-access and other ultra high-speed optical network applications.

Keywords

III-V semiconductors; code division multiple access; gallium arsenide; high-speed optical techniques; infrared detectors; light absorption; optical communication equipment; optical waveguides; p-i-n photodiodes; photoconductivity; photodetectors; two-photon processes; 1.5 mum; GaAs; GaAs p-i-n waveguide photodetectors; fixed pulse energy; nonlinear processing; optical pulsewidth inverse; pulsewidth dependence; subnanosecond electrical response; subpicosecond optical pulses; two-photon absorption GaAs waveguide photodetectors; two-photon absorption photocurrent; ultra high-speed optical network applications; ultrafast optical code-division multiple-access; ultrafast optical thresholding; Absorption; Gallium arsenide; High speed optical techniques; Nonlinear optics; Optical pulses; Optical waveguides; Photodetectors; Pulse measurements; Space vector pulse width modulation; Ultrafast optics;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/68.559399

Filename

559399