Low power penalty tunable slow light using vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser amplifier

A tunable slow light of 2.5-Gb/s pseudo-random binary sequence signal using a 1550-nm vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) is experimentally demonstrated. The influences of the bias current and the gain saturation on the slow light are investigated. With bias current increasing, tunable optical group delay up to 98 ps is obtained at room temperature. Demonstration of the time delay between 16 and 24 ps by signal intensity change is reported. Under an appropriate bias current, by tuning the input signal to track the peak gain wavelength of the VCSEL, slow light of a power penalty as low as 1 dB is achieved. With such a low power penalty, the VCSEL has a great potential application as a compact optical buffer.