Abstract

Optical functional devices such as wavelength converters and all-optical switches based on the optical nonlinearities in SOAs have been extensively studied recently. SOAs can amplify sub-picosecond optical pulses. However, the optical gain reduces and the pulse waveform distorts for high intensity pulses. This waveform distortion may deteriorate the conversion efficiency of the four-wave mixing and the extinction ratio of the all-optical switches. We reported the nonlinear propagation characteristics of sub-picosecond optical pulses in SOAs, which were measured by the cross-correlation technique[1].

© 2000 IEEE