多电极半导体光放大器对增益特性的改善

提出了采用多电极实现电流非均匀注入来改变半导体光放大器(SOA)内部的载流子分布,从而改变其增益饱和特性的一种新的方案.用SOA分段模型的计算结果表明,与单电极均匀注入电流的SOA 相比,在同样的总注入电流下,对一个两电极SOA采用前面小后面大的非均匀电流注入,可以提高饱和输出功率和饱和输入功率.而采用前面大后面小的电流注入方式,则将使SOA更容易发生饱和,不仅饱和输出功率与饱和输入功率减小,而且增益谱在饱和后的压缩程度加大,增益谱压缩的对称性提高.对多电极SOA,可以方便灵活地调节各节之间的长度比和注入电流比来满足不同的应用要求.

Improvement of Gain Characteristics of Multi-Electrode Semiconductor Optical Amplifiers

A new scheme is proposed to improve the gain saturation characteristics of semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA). Carrier distribution along cavity is changed by nonuniform current injection in a multi-electrode SOA. Based on the multi-section model, the gain saturation characteristics of a two-electrode SOA are analyzed. If the current density in the first section of a two-electrode SOA is larger than that in the second section, then the saturation output power and the saturation input power will be larger than those of a single electrode SOA at the same amount of total current injection; If the current density in the first section is smaller than that in the second section, then the saturation output power and saturation input power will decrease, not only will the gain compression increase, but also the symmetry of gain compression spectrum will be improved. For a multi-electrode SOA, it is very convenient to adjust the length ratio and injection current ratio between sections to meet various requirements in practice, which will be very attracting.