Abstract

Nearly degenerate four-wave mixing (NDFWM) in semiconductor laser amplifiers lias recently attracted considerable attention from the viewpoints of nonlinear optics ^1-4 and crosstalk in linear optical amplifier applications^5-9. The latter is mainly concerned with operation in the unsaturated signal gain region. We first demonstrated the NDFWM in a traveling-wave semiconductor laser amplifier (TWA) operating at a 2- dB signal gain compression point, in which detuning asymmetry was discovered and the frequency conversion efficiency, i.e., the ratio of FWM signal output to the probe input, was observed to be as large as 14 dB.³

© 1988 Optical Society of America