Ultrafast nonlinear dynamics in semiconductor optical amplifiers for optical signal processing

Abstract

We present the investigation results on the nonlinear phase and chirp dynamics in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). Time-resolved gain and phase dynamics of a quantum well SOA are measured using 2 ps pump pulses into an integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer switch under a co-propagation arrangement. Ultrafast component in the phase recovery is clearly observed. We explain the ultrafast phase dynamic by using a field propagation numerical model that includes the impact of sub-picosecond intra-band effects of the SOA. In addition, we investigate the chirp properties of the SOA in all-optical switches, and analyze the influences of chirp dynamics upon the detuned-filtering-based optical switches that extract the ultrafast chirp component to realize more than 160 Gbit/s optical switching. The results are very useful for SOA-based ultrafast optical signal processing in photonic networks.