Cascaded, stagger-tuned, broadband, low-ripple optical amplifiers

We show theoretically that the gain spectrum obtained by cascading two or more semiconductor optical amplifiers can have a ripple amplitude that is significantly smaller than that currently attainable with a single stage of optical amplification. For example, by cascading two stagger-tuned amplifiers, each having 10 dB of coupling loss and facet reflectivities of 10(-3), one can achieve a net (fiber-to-fiber) gain of 30 dB with less than 2 dB of ripple amplitude. We also show that, under some conditions, simple cascading of optical amplifiers, without the stagger tuning and associated control, can lead to low-ripple, high-gain optical amplification.