Characterization Of Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers Research Articles

Thermal and Optical Characterization of Photonic Integrated Circuits by Thermoreflectance Microscopy

We report high resolution, non-invasive, thermal and optical characterization of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) and SOA-based photonic integrated circuits (PICs) using thermoreflectance microscopy. Chip-scale temperature imaging of SOAs and PICs, along with an energy balance model, are used to calculate the optical power distribution within and between SOAs to determine optical gain, fiber coupling loss, and passive component loss under normal device operating conditions. This technique is demonstrated to map optical power in SOA-based Mach-Zehnder interferometer (SOA-MZI) PICs, with close agreement with photocurrent and fiber-coupled measurements. The use of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) for fiber-free characterization of the PICs is also shown, enabling non-invasive, wafer-scale testing prior to packaging.

Experimental characterization of semiconductor optical amplifiers used as frequency converters by means of four-wave mixing

Abstract In this article we report extended measurements of four-wave mixing in bulk-semiconductor amplifiers using continuous wave sources. We demonstrate that four-wave mixing in semiconductor amplifiers permits realizing in the practice frequency conversion in the spectral range of utility for optical telecommunications. Efficiency larger than 1 have been demonstrated up to 1 THz with a low level of background noise. In addition, this technique has allowed us to investigate the carrier dynamics down to an equivalent time resolution of the order of few tens of femtoseconds.