Gain-switched laser pulse propagation in a semiconductor optical amplifier

Author

Talli, Giuseppe ; Vickers, A.J. ; Adams, M.J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. Syst. Eng., Essex Univ., Colchester

Volume

2

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

544

Abstract

The simplest method to produce pulses in the picosecond range for applications in telecommunications is to use a gain-switched laser. There has been considerable interest in short pulse propagation in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs), but to our knowledge little attention has been given to specific effects arising from the use of gain-switched pulses. In this paper we report the results of measurements of the propagation of such pulses in an SOA and compare them with results from a numerical model. The model is able to give good agreement with experiment for the characteristic distortion observed in the output pulse spectrum

Keywords

carrier density; chirp modulation; distributed feedback lasers; optical pulse generation; semiconductor optical amplifiers; DFB laser; characteristic distortion; envelope function; excess carrier concentration; gain-switched laser pulse propagation; linear chirp model; modal gain parameter; multiple section rate equation model; numerical model; output pulse spectrum; polarisation-insensitive SOA; semiconductor optical amplifiers; short pulse propagation; slowly-varying approximation; wavelength shift; Distortion measurement; Numerical models; Optical distortion; Optical propagation; Optical pulses; Pulse amplifiers; Pulse measurements; Semiconductor lasers; Semiconductor optical amplifiers; Stimulated emission;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, 2001. LEOS 2001. The 14th Annual Meeting of the IEEE

Conference_Location

San Diego, CA

ISSN

1092-8081

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7105-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/LEOS.2001.968930

Filename

968930