Abstract

Semiconductor optical amplifiers with multiple quantum well (MQW) active regions have broad gain bandwidth, high saturation output power and high saturation output energy, at the expense of moderate small-signal gain. [1] The cause of the high saturation output energy and moderate small-signal gain is the small mode confinement factor, Γ, for these devices, which is typically ~0.05. [2] The high saturation output power is caused by the high saturation output energy and, presumably, by a short gain recovery time. [1] In this work, we directly measure the gain recovery time in a MQW optical amplifier. The gain recovery dynamics contains components due to both device-dependent and material-dependent processes.

© 1990 Optical Society of America