E. Derouin

Recent Advances on InAs/InP Quantum Dash Based Semiconductor Lasers and Optical Amplifiers Operating at 1.55

This paper summarizes recent advances on InAs/InP quantum dash (QD) materials for lasers and amplifiers, and QD device performance with particular interest in optical communication. We investigate both InAs/InP dashes in a barrier and dashes in a well (DWELL) heterostructures operating at 1.5 mum. These two types of QDs can provide high gain and low losses. Continuous-wave (CW) room-temperature lasing operation on ground state of cavity length as short as 200 mum has been achieved, demonstrating the high modal gain of the active core. A threshold current density as low as 110 A/cm2 per QD layer has been obtained for infinite-length DWELL laser. An optimized DWELL structure allows achieving of a T0 larger than 100 K for broad-area (BA) lasers, and of 80 K for single-transverse-mode lasers in the temperature range between 25degC and 85degC. Buried ridge stripe (BRS)-type single-mode distributed feedback (DFB) lasers are also demonstrated for the first time, exhibiting a side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) as high as 45 dB. Such DFB lasers allow the first floor-free 10-Gb/s direct modulation for back-to-back and transmission over 16-km standard optical fiber. In addition, novel results are given on gain, noise, and four-wave mixing of QD-based semiconductor optical amplifiers. Furthermore, we demonstrate that QD Fabry-Perot (FP) lasers, owing to the small confinement factor and the three-dimensional (3-D) quantification of electronic energy levels, exhibit a beating linewidth as narrow as 15 kHz. Such an extremely narrow linewidth, compared to their QW or bulk counterparts, leads to the excellent phase noise and time-jitter characteristics when QD lasers are actively mode-locked. These advances constitute a new step toward the application of QD lasers and amplifiers to the field of optical fiber communications

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Using a tapered in width square active waveguide and bulk InGaAsP/InP material we demonstrate a polarisation independent amplifier structure operating at 1550 nm with a reduced far-field divergence. Improvement of coupling efficiency enables us to achieve a 25 dB fiber to fiber gain together with 9 dBm fiber saturation output power for 150 mA bias current. A 200 ps gain recovery time allows fast gating or wavelength conversion.<<ETX>>

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In this letter, we demonstrate the first result of a high-power (1 mW) continuous-wave room-temperature vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser emitting at 1.55 /spl mu/m using a single InP substrate. The whole structure was grown monolithically using gas source molecular beam epitaxy and incorporates two original approaches. The first originality consists in the growth of a metamorphic GaAs-AlAs Bragg mirror directly on an InP-based cavity. The second novel idea is to use a tunnel junction for current injection. Moreover by using these two approaches the processing is very simple and, therefore, fulfills the goal for low-cost laser production in access and interconnections applications.

1.55 /spl mu/m polarisation independent semiconductor optical amplifier with 25 dB fiber to fiber gain

We propose and demonstrate the application of an intracavity horizontally tapered (in width) active stripe to adiabatically reduce the output beam divergence of a 1.48‐μm InGaAsP/InP strained quantum well laser. We achieve far‐field full width at half‐maximum divergences as low as 13° together with 100 mW emitted power into stable single transverse mode and 400 mA driving current. Maximum coupling efficiency to lensed single mode fiber of 73% is obtained.

1-mW CW-RT monolithic VCSEL at 1.55 μm

We have demonstrated a low-cost high-bandwidth and high-responsivity evanescent waveguide unitravelling-carrier photodiode (PD) fabricated using all 2-in InP processing including on-wafer mirrors and coating. Optimization of the optical input waveguide was made using the method of the genetic algorithm associated with a beam propagation method. Optical fiber coupling to the PD is based on a diluted multimode waveguide allowing simple material epitaxial growth. The fabricated PDs exhibit simultaneously 0.76-A/W responsivity at 1.55 /spl mu/m, >50-GHz bandwidth, and more than 22-mA average saturation photocurrent at 50 GHz. The light polarization dependence is less than 0.1 dB.

Tapered active stripe for 1.5‐μm InGaAsP/InP strained multiple quantum well lasers with reduced beam divergence

Summary form only given. In this paper, we report a new clamped gain InGaAsP semiconductor optical amplifier (CG SOA) structure with an integrated Bragg grating as a wavelength selective reflector and demonstrate crosstalk suppression in case of WDM application at 2.5 Gbit/s.

High performance evanescent edge coupled waveguide unitraveling-carrier photodiodes for >40-gb/s optical receivers

A device concept for laterally extracting selected wavelengths from an optical signal traveling along a waveguide, for operation in metropolitan area networks, is presented. The signal on the fundamental mode of a multimode photonic crystal waveguide is coupled to a higher-order mode, at a center frequency that spatially depends on the slowly varying guide parameters. The device is compact, intrinsically fault tolerant, and can split any desired fraction of the signal for monitoring purpose. Characterizations by the internal light source technique validate the optical concept whereas an integrated device with four photodiodes qualifies its potential with respect to real-world applications.

Clamped gain travelling wave semiconductor optical amplifier for wavelength division multiplexing applications

We present a method of direct measurement of spectral gain and corresponding data in photonic crystal waveguides defined in heterostructures on InP substrates. The method makes use of two photopumping beams, one for gain generation, the other for amplification probing. The results show a clear enhancement of gain at spectral regions of low-group velocity, namely at the edges of the so-called mini-stopband of a three-missing rows wide photonic crystal waveguide.

Compact wavelength monitoring by lateral outcoupling in wedged photonic crystal multimode waveguides

We demonstrate an AlInAs-InGaAs separate absorption, grading, and multiplication avalanche photodiode (APD) with a very thin avalanche layer operating at 1550 nm for 10-Gb/s optical transmission achieving simultaneously high responsivity (0.9 A/W at M = 1), very low excess noise factor (F(M=10) = 3), and very high gain-bandwidth product of 240 GHz. To our knowledge, this is the first time that a back-side illuminated planar junction AlInAs-InGaAs APD achieved such performances.

Enhanced gain measurement at mode singularities in InP-based photonic crystal waveguides

Narrow waveguides consisting of a single defect-line (W1) in a square lattice photonic crystal are fabricated on InP using the substrate approach. A single-mode distributed-feedback laser emission is obtained under optical pumping at room temperature. Lasing occurs at the second folding point of the dispersion curve of the fundamental waveguide mode (wave vector k=0). The emitted wavelength ranges from 1420to1580nm for a lattice period varying from 460to520nm and a constant air filling factor of ∼26%. The highly monomode behavior is explained using two-dimensional plane-wave models. Similar experiments conducted on triangular lattice W1 waveguides do not yield a laser emission. Three-dimensional simulations confirm that triangular lattice W1 waveguides suffer higher losses than their square homologues.