Optical frequency conversion using nondegenerate four-wave mixing in broad-area angled grating (/spl alpha/-DFB) lasers

Abstract

Summary form only given.Four-wave mixing techniques are of great interest as a mechanism for wavelength conversion applications in multiple wavelength telecommunications systems. Angled-distributed feedback (/spl alpha/-DFB) lasers are ideal device structures for frequency conversion via intracavity four-wave mixing. Lateral grating confinement in the broad area multimode waveguide results in stable single longitudinal and transverse modes. Narrow frequency bandwidths of less than 10 MHz can be obtained in a fundamental spatial mode with output powers on the order of 1 watt from a 300 micron aperture device. Using the correspondingly intense intracavity laser beams to pump the four-wave mixing (FWM) process, all that is needed is an external probe beam to be injected into the cavity for efficient frequency conversion. A probe beam at frequency /spl omega//sub /spl mu// injected into the laser cavity with intracavity beams at /spl omega//sub /spl mu// will generate a conjugate beam at 2/spl omega//sub 2/-/spl omega//sub 1/. In this case, the nonlinear susceptibility involved in the FWM process is strongly enhanced by the optical gain and the cavity feedback.