Mid-infrared efficient generation by resonant four-wave mixing in a three-coupled-quantum-well nanostructure

We present a cascade configuration for the realization of highly efficient four-wave mixing (FWM) process in an asymmetric semiconductor three-coupled-quantum-well (TCQW) structure based on intersubband transitions (ISBTs). In the proposed TCQW scheme, the efficiency of the generated FWM mid-infrared (MIR) signal is significantly enhanced and the obtained maximum efficiency is greater than 50%. The corresponding explicit analytical expressions for the input probe and generated FWM pulsed fields are derived by use of the coupled Schrödinger-Maxwell approach and the FWM efficiency versus several variables is also discussed in details. Such a semiconductor system is much more practical than its atomic counterpart because of its flexible design and the wide adjustable parameters. This nonlinear optical process in the TCQW solid-state material can be used for efficiently generating coherent short-wavelength radiation.     

Kerr non-linearity and four-wave mixing in a double-cascade type four-level system of multiple quantum wells

We study the non-linear optical response in multiple quantum wells structure with a double-cascade type four-level configuration based on excitons and biexcitons transitions. By analysing the Kerr non-linear effects, we obtain the slow, mutually matched group velocities and giant Kerr non-linearity of probe and signal fields. While when the signal (or probe) field is removed, the non-linear optical phenomenon four-wave mixing (FWM) originating from quantum interference is demonstrated. The FWM efficiency of the system study is about 50%. Such a semiconductor system is much more practical than its atomic counterpart because of its flexible design and the controllable interference strength.     

分布反馈激光器中剩余法布里-珀罗腔模对非简并四波混频特性的影响

基于四波混频(FWM)的全光波长转换技术是未来多波长通信系统的核心技术之一。除半导体光放大器(SOA)外,半导体激光器也是进行波长变换的器件。实验研究了小频率失谐到大频率失谐下分布反馈(DFB)激光器中剩余法布里珀罗腔模对非简并四波混频(NDFWM)的影响,并对其四波混频转换效率进行了分析。结果表明:当探测光波长与法布里珀罗腔的某一谐振波长一致时,分布反馈激光器中的四波混频转换效率将得到显著的增强;当频率失谐为太赫兹时,仍可得到较高的四波混频转换效率。     

Polarization qubit phase gate in a coupled quantum-well nanostructure

We show that a giant Kerr nonlinearity with a relatively large cross phase modulation (CPM) phase-shift can be used for realizing polarization quantum phase gate based on the nonlinear optical response in a coupled semiconductor double quantum well (SDQW) structure via intersubband transitions.     

Efficient generation of maximally entangled states via four-wave mixing in a semiconductor quantum-dot nanostructure

We investigate the generation of the maximally entangled state of two weak-light pulses (the probe and generated pulses) via four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor quantum dot (SQD) with a biexciton-exciton cascade configuration. The results show that this maximally entangled state can propagate with an ultraslow group velocity under suitable parameter conditions. For application, our proposed scheme is probably achievable with the present technology by applying the standard GaAs/InGaAs self-assemble quantum dots (QDs). Furthermore, our calculations provide a guideline for the realization of the maximally entangled state in the SQD solid-state system, which can be much more practical than that in an atomic system because of its flexible design and the wide tunable parameters.     

Control over hysteresis curves and thresholds of optical bistability in different semiconductor double quantum wells

The effects of optical field on the phenomenon of optical bistability(OB) are investigated in a K-type semiconductor double quantum well(SDQW) under various parametric conditions. It is shown that the OB threshold can be manipulated by increasing the intensity of coupling field. The dependence of the shift of OB hysteresis curve on probe wavelength detuning is then explored. In order to demonstrate controllability of the OB in this SDQW, we compare the OB features of three different configurations which could arise in this SDQW scheme, i.e., K-type, Y-type, and inverted Y-type systems. The controllability of this semiconductor nanostructure medium makes the presented OB scheme more valuable for applications in all-optical switches, information storage, and logic circuits of all optical information processing.     

A Novel Method for Wavelength Conversion with Dual-pump Four-wave Mixing in a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

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A Novel Method for Wavelength Conversion with Dual-pump Four-wave Mixing in a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

Using a semiconductor-fiber ring laser, a novel method for the all optical wavelength conversion based on dual-pump four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is demonstrated. For the input signal with different wavelengths, only one external pump is needed. This scheme can simplify the dual-pump FWM in SOA and has nearly constant conversion efficiency and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over 50nm range of wavelength shifts.     

Characteristics of wavelength conversion of short optical pulses in quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers

The characteristics of short optical pulse four-wave mixing (FWM) and amplification in quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers (QD-SOAs) are investigated taken into account the effect of the multi-discrete QD energy levels. Different saturation and recovery response for the electron and hole states are observed, which is attributed to different energy spacing between the energy states. We found that the 3 dB saturation energy of QD-SOA depends on the pulse width for short input pulses. Also, the optimum time delay between the probe and pump pulses in QD-SOAs, which provides maximum FWM efficiency in QD-SOAs, is smaller than the optimum delay in quantum well SOA.     

Amplitude Regenerative Characteristics of RZ-DPSK Wavelength Converter Based on Four-Wave Mixing in SOA

We investigate the phase-preserving amplitude regenerative characteristics of the return-to-zero （RZ） differential- phase-shift-keying （DPSK） wavelength conversion based on four-wave m/xing （FWM） in a semiconductor optical amplifier （SOA）. The Q-factor and the optical signal-to-noise ratio （OSNR） before and after conversion are experimentally obtained and analysed in different input noise power levels. In both the continuous-wave and synchronous clock pumping cases, we find that there is amplitude clamping in the FWM conversion due to the gain saturation of SOA, which can suppress the amplitude fluctuation of the converted DPSK signal before and after demodulation. We have achieved 2-dB Q penalty improvement in our experiment demonstration of lOGbit/s RZ-DPSK signal with OSNR lower than 19dB.     

Multichannel wavelength multicasting for two QPSK signals based on FWM in SOA

We experimentally demonstrate multichannel wavelength multicasting for two nonreturn-to-zero quadrature phase-shift keying(NRZ-QPSK) channels based on four-wave mixing(FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifier(SOA). Through the interaction with the two pumps in SOA, the input two 25 Gb/s NRZ-QPSK channels are successfully simultaneously multicast to five and two new wavelengths, respectively. All the multicast channels are with a power penalty less than 2.5 d B at a bit error rate(BER) of 10-3. A characterization of the system performance using conversion efficiency and BER as figures-of-merit in terms of pump and signal powers is also presented. The results indicate that the pump and signal powers can be optimized to eliminate the introduced deleterious nonlinear components. The wavelengths of the two NRZ-QPSK channels and the two pumps need to be specified to avoid the crosstalk induced by high-order FWM.     

High Efficiency Four-Wave Mixing with Relaxation Coupling of Longitude-Optical Phonons in Semiconductor Quantum Wells

The time-dependent analysis of four-wave mixing(FWM) has been performed in four-level double semiconductor quantum wells(SQWs) considering the cross-coupling of the longitude-optical phonons(LOP) relaxation. It is shown that both the amplitude and the conversion efficiency of the FWM field enhance greatly with the increasing strength of cross-coupling of LOP relaxation. Interestingly, a double peak value of the conversion efficiency is obtained under a relatively weak single-photon detuning considering the LOP coupling. When the detuning becomes stronger,the double peaks turn into one peak appearing at the line respect to the about equality two control fields. The results can be interpreted by the effect of electromagnetically induced transparency and the indirect transition. Such controlled high efficiency FWM based on the cross-coupling LOP may have potential applications in quantum control and communications.     

Analysis of format conversion from optical 16QAM to QPSK based on cascaded four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifier

A scheme of format conversion from optical 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) to quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) signal based on cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) is proposed. Theoretical analysis and simulations of the format conversion scheme are conducted to validate the feasibility of the proposal. In this proposal, the phase conjugated of 16QAM signal is generated after the first FWM process in an SOA, and then the QPSK signal is converted due to the second non-degenerate FWM (ND-FWM) process in another SOA. The performance and the optimal design of the 10 Gbit/s format conversion system under various key parameters of SOAs are evaluated and discussed. Simulation results present useful to enable interconnection between backbone network and access network.     

Theory of pulse propagation and four-wave mixing in a quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifier

A theory, combining the relations of pulse traveling into quantum dot (QD) semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) with the four-wave mixing (FWM) theory in these SOAs, is developed. Carrier density pulsation (CDP), carrier heating (CH), and spectral hole burning (SHB) contributions on FWM efficiency are discussed. Effect of QD ground state and wetting layer are included. An additional parameter appears in the gain integral relation of QD SOAs. An equation formulating pulses in the QD SOAs is introduced. We have found that FWM in QD SOAs is detuning and is pulse width dependent. For short pulses, CH is dominant at high detunings (10–100 GHz) while at higher detunings (>100 GHz) the SHB is the dominant one. Undesired paunch behavior is shown in QD SOAs then, CDP must be reduced.     

Slow and fast light in quantum dot based semiconductor optical amplifiers

Recent progress in the field of quantum dot/dash based semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) for slow and fast light is discussed. Room temperature fast light has been obtained in InAs/InP QDash based SOAs by means of coherent population oscillation and four wave mixing (FWM) effects. Typical optical delays amount to 55 ps at 2 GHz. Growth optimization of the QDashes allowed us to achieve high modal gain, leading to very similar performances, e.g. gain and FWM efficiency, to those of a bulk SOA. A novel approach based on linear spectrograms is also introduced to measure the phase shift induced by wave mixing in an SOA.     

20-Gb/s and Higher Bit Rate Optical Wavelength Conversion for RZ-DPSK Signal Based on Four-Wave Mixing in Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

Abstract

We investigate 20 Gb/s wavelength conversion for return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (RZ-DPSK) signal using four-wave mixing (FWM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). We show that the 10-Gb/s RZ-DPSK signal-to-pump ratio increases up to ?0.286 dB with Q factor improvement of 1.663 dB for increasing the cascadeability of optical networks. The effect of variation in bandwidth for an ideal dual-arm Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is illustrated. For different bit rates, the converted power signal is investigated with increase in signal input power. We show that the quality of converted signal is best before the saturation of SOA. The dependence of four-wave mixing (FWM) efficiency and converted signal power with signal input power is also studied, and it is found that FWM efficiency decreases with increase in signal input power.

The impact of signal-to–pump power ratio, unsaturated amplifier gain, and pump power is further optimized with minimum Q factor penalty for 10-Gb/s and 20-Gb/s bit rate. We show that converted signal power increases up to power saturation level and then starts decreasing. We also show that with higher bit rate, we have a wide range of choices for pump power signal. We further investigate the quality of converted signal at 10 Gb/s, which shows an improvement over signal input power. Finally, the increase in transmission distance after wavelength conversion is investigated.     

Enhancement and Suppression of Four-Wave Mixing in a Four-Level Atomic System

We report observations of the enhancement and suppression of four-wave mixing （FWM） in an electromagnetically induced transparency window in a Y-type ^85 Rb atomic system. The results show the evolution of the dressed effects （from pure enhancement to partial enhancement/suppression, and finally into pure suppression） in the degenerate-FWM processes. Moreover, we use the perturbation chain method to describe the FWM process. Finally, we observe the polarization dependence of the enhancement and suppression of the FWM signal.     

Four-wave mixing in dual wavelength fiber laser utilizing SOA for wavelength conversion

In this paper, a novel configuration of a wavelength converter is set forth by utilizing a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) as a nonlinear gain medium to generate a four-wave mixing (FWM) effect by using a dual wavelength bi-erbium-doped fiber laser that uses an Arrayed Waveguide Grating (AWG) together with two optical channel selector (OSC) as selective elements to function as a dual wavelength switchable pump power. The four-wave mixing (FWM) is produced with a wavelength detuning of 7 nm from the pump and signal which used is as the converted signal at wavelength 1532.8 nm or 1534.5 nm for transferring data from the input signal at wavelength 1547.0 nm. Thus, even though the conversion efficiency is as low as −43 dB, it is still possible for applications as a wavelength converter.     

Evaluation of the cross-polarization modulation impact on the conversion efficiency of a four wave mixing process developed in a bulk-SOA

This paper addresses, theoretically and experimentally, the impact of the cross-polarization modulation (XPolM) phenomenon on the conversion efficiency of a four wave mixing (FWM) process taking place in a bulk-SOA with input signals linearly co-polarized at 0°, 45°, 90°, and −45°. Based on the experimental determination of the output polarization states of the pump and probe signals, a technique is proposed to incorporate the XPolM effect in classic models describing the FWM. It is demonstrated that classic models lacking the inclusion of the XPolM effect can reflect a significant error in the estimation of the conversion efficiency.     

Optical Bloch equations with dual photon excitation explain the polarization dependence of four wave mixing quantum beats

We explain the polarization dependence of four wave mixing (FWM) quantum beats for semiconductors as essentially due to the spin phase correlations of photo-excited electrons, rather than to Coulomb interaction between the electrons. A theoretical analysis is given within the framework of optical Bloch equations for the light–semiconductor interactions and the Luttinger–Kohn model for the band structure. Residual Coulomb interactions between charge carriers are ignored. The results suggest that the polarization dependence of FWM quantum beats is a purely coherent effect of dual photon excitations, rather than, e.g., exciton–exciton Coulomb interaction. We show that the coherence transfer between the excited states is responsible for the FWM in a configuration with orthogonally polarized pump and probe.