Semiconductor lasers offer promise as high-speed transmitters for free-space optical communication systems. This article examines the performance of a semiconductor laser system in a master-oscillator power-amplifier (MOPA) geometry developed through a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract with SDL, Inc. The compact thermo-electric cooler (TEC) packaged device is capable of 1-W out...

The nonlinear reflectivity of semiconductor saturable absorber mirrors is investigated with ultrafast time-resolved and time-averaged reflectivity measurements. The relative contributions of absorption bleaching and induced absorption are studied as a function of fluence and wavelength. The impact of induced absorption on the stability of continuous-wave mode-locking is considered theoretically...

In this paper 16 channels DWDM system at 10Gbps has been investigated with Semiconductor optical amplifier at 0.8 nm channel spacing and the performance has been calculated on the basis of bit error rate, quality factor and optical output power. It is observed that the signal can be transmitted with acceptable BER and Q-factor using Semiconductor optical amplifier at low signal input power of -...

Differential cross-polarization modulation (DXPoM) wavelength conversion using a semiconductor optical amplifier has been proposed to outperform substantially traditional cross-polarization modulation (XPoM). This work presents analytical small-signal models of XPoM and DXPoM. The transfer function of DXPoM is used to elucidate the significant improvement in bandwidth and the relationships amon...

The hot electron light emitting and lasing in semiconductor heterostructure-vertical-cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (HELLISH-VCSOA) device is based on Ga0.35In0.65 N0.02As0.08/GaAs material for operation in the 1.3-μm window of the optical communications. The device has undoped distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). Therefore, problems such as those associated with refractive index contra...

We report on both continuous-wave and passively mode-locked laser actions of a new ytterbium-doped laser crystal Yb:Gd(2)SiO(5) (Yb:GSO) under high-power diode-end-pumping. Due to the anisotropic and compact crystal structure, Yb:GSO exhibits a large manifold splitting of Yb(3+) ions, and a Yb:GSO laser can be operated efficiently with negligible reabsorption losses at emission wavelengths. In ...

By exploiting nonlinear effects in a semiconductor optical amplifier, different functionalities for all-optical digital signal processing are implemented. In particular we demonstrate the logic functions of integrated addition-subtraction and demultiplexing. The all-optical realizations are based on semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI), which represent one...

We show theoretically through computer simulations that phase-conjugate optical feedback that is realized through four-wave mixing can produce mode locking in multilongitudinal-mode semiconductor lasers. Phase-conjugate feedback, in contrast to ordinary optical feedback, directly couples pairs of longitudinal modes. For certain strengths of phase-conjugate reflectivities, the phases and beat fr...

Active harmonic mode-locking is particularly attractive for communication systems which require a high bit-rate locked to an external clock. However, most such lasers are implemented in a ring geometry where pulses pass through the modulator in only one direction. A linear laser has several advantages such as the possibility of integration, the simple incorporation of a semiconductor saturable ...