Enhancement in the gain recovery of a semiconductor optical amplifier by device temperature control

We present a numerical investigation on the temperature dependence of gain recovery, of a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). It is shown that the decrease in temperature significantly speed-up the gain recovery of the SOA. Under typical operating conditions, a 20 K reduction in temperature of the SOA results in a decrease of 150 ps in the gain recovery time. A comparative estimation of device temperature and assisted-light power requirements for enhancing the gain recovery has also been carried out. It is found that, a decrease of 8 K in the temperature of the SOA, is as effective in enhancing the gain recovery as injection of 25 dBm assisted-light power in the counter-propagating mode. Our study shows that under moderate current biasing conditions, temperature reduction is a better and convenient option to speed-up the gain recovery of an SOA, than the use of external assisted-light injection, which requires an additional laser source and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) components for coupling and de-coupling, leading to insertion losses in the communication channel.