Wavelength-dependent femtosecond pulse amplification in wideband tapered-waveguide quantum well semiconductor optical...

In this paper, we study the wavelength-dependent amplification in three different wideband quantum well semiconductor optical amplifiers (QWAs) having conventional, exponentially tapered, and linearly tapered active region waveguide structures. A new theoretical model for tapered-waveguide QWAs considering the effect of lateral carrier density distribution and the strain effect in the quantum well is established based on a quantum well transmission line modeling method. The temporal and spectral characteristics of amplified femtosecond pulse are analyzed for each structure. It was found that, for the amplification of a single femtosecond pulse, the tapered-waveguide QWA provides higher saturation gain, and the output spectra of the amplified pulse in all three structures exhibit an apparent redshift and bandwidth narrowing due to the reduction of carrier density; however, the output spectrum in the tapered-waveguide amplifier is less distorted and exhibits smaller bandwidth narrowing. For the simultaneous amplification of two femtosecond pulses with different central frequencies, in all the three structures, two peaks appear in the output spectra while the peak at the frequency closer to the peak frequency of the QWA gain spectrum receives higher amplification due to the frequency (wavelength) dependence of the QWA gain. At a low peak power level of the input pulse, the bandwidth of each window in the tapered structure is larger than that of the conventional waveguide structure, which aggravates the spectrum alias in the amplification of femtosecond pulses with different central frequencies. As the peak powers of the two pulses increase, the spectrum alias in the conventional waveguide becomes more serious while there are small changes in the tapered structures. Also, we have found that in the amplification of a femtosecond pulse train, the linear-tapered QWAs exhibit the fastest gain recovery as compared with the conventional and exponentially tapered QWAs.