Dynamic chirp control of all-optical format-converted pulsed data from a multi-wavelength inverse-optical-comb injected semiconductor optical amplifier

Abstract

By spectrally and temporally reshaping the gain- window of a traveling- wave semiconductor optical amplifier ( TWSOA) with a backward injected multi- or single- wavelength inverse- optical- comb, we theoretically and experimentally investigate the dynamic frequency chirp of the all- optical 10GBit/ s Return- to- Zero ( RZ) data- stream format- converted from the TWSOA under strong cross- gain depletion scheme. The multi- wavelength inverse- optical- comb injection effectively depletes the TWSOA gain spectrally and temporally, remaining a narrow gain- window and a reduced spectral linewidth and provide a converted RZ data with a smaller peak- to- peak frequency chirp of 6.7 GHz. Even at high inverse- optical- comb injection power and highly biased current condition for improving the operational bit- rate, the chirp of the multi- wavelength- injection converted RZ pulse is still 2.1- GHz smaller than that obtained by using single- wavelength injection at a cost of slight pulsewidth broadening by 1 ps. (C) 2007 Optical Society of America.