Four-wave mixing in semiconductor laser amplifiers: phase matching in configurations with three input waves

Summary form only given. Four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor laser amplifiers (SLA) is of interest for both theoretical and experimental investigations. Conventional FWM experiments use a pump wave E/sub 1/ (frequency /spl omega//sub 1/) and a signal wave E/sub A/ (/spl omega//sub A/) copropagating with the pump. To efficiently create mixing products, both waves are required to have the same polarization, which is a major drawback for the application of FWM in optical communication networks. The addition of a second pumpwave E/sub 2/ (/spl omega//sub 2/) allows for both polarization-independent frequency conversion as well as investigations on phase matching in optical amplifiers.