High performance polarization-independent Quantum Dot Semiconductor Optical Amplifier with 22 dB fiber to fiber gain using Mode Propagation Tuning without additional polarization controller

Abstract

A detailed numerical investigation of polarization-independent quantum dot InAs/GaAs semiconductor optical amplifier (PIQS) based on a technique called mode propagation tuning (MPT) without the need for the polarization controller (PC) is reported, which can solve the limitation caused by polarization sensitivity in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). Our calculations show that by a suitable tuning of the thickness of the active layer, only the TE0 and TM0 modes can propagate. Moreover, the gain saturation behavior of this SOA was measured at 1.55μm and found to be polarization-independent (PI). At active layer thickness of 1.7μm, the confinement factor was 0.75 and 0.7 for TE0 and TM0 modes, respectively, which leads to a gain difference up to 0.1dB. The rate equations of the QD-SOA were also solved and a fiber to fiber gain of 22dB was obtained. Additionally, a numerical simulation is presented which shows that the residual gain ripple and polarization sensitivity are sufficiently reduced when residual facet reflectivities of the SOA are in the range below 10-4. In addition, the full-width at half-maximum of the horizontal and vertical far-field patterns (FFPs) are measured as 30°×30°. The proposed structure can be used for logical applications.