Abstract

The effects of saturable gain and saturable absorption have been of interest for optical logic devices because of potential switching times of the order of a few picosecond. Through saturable gain, a semiconductor laser is used to pump a second laser, stimulation emission that will not be captured into the lasing mode of the latter. This reduces the amount of usable gain in the cavity thereby reducing the output intensity. With saturable absorption, an absorbing region within the laser cavity is optically pumped by a second laser. If the laser is biased below threshold, the pumping by the second laser will increase the electron and hole densities in that region, thus increasing the gain. This permits the laser to begin lasing.

© 1990 Optical Society of America