Abstract

Advances in optical communications have stimulated the study of optical frequency conversion in semiconductor laser amplifiers, operating with several input optical carriers at large frequency spacings (up to the THz region).^1,2 A proper model for such phenomena must include very fast relaxation effects, such as carrier heating, spectral hole burning, and, in quantum well devices, also carrier capture and escape times. The material optical response is studied by means of the density matrix formalism, and wave propagation in the optical waveguide is treated in the framework of coupled mode theory.³ On the basis of such a model, a computer code has been implemented to evaluate the performances of four-wave mixing in InGaAsP MQW traveling wave amplifiers.

© 1994 IEEE