Abstract

Semiconductor laser amplifiers (SLA) will play an important role as functional devices for optical signal processing. The main advantages of these devices are optical gain, compactness and the potential for optoelectronic integration. Applications of the SLA, in which the operation speed is restricted by the free carrier lifetime to less than about 10 GHz are studied extensivly /1/. In this paper we report on applications of the SLA, in which the operation speed is determined by intraband dynamic (spectral hole burning, dynamic carrier heating) with characteristic times in the femtosecond range. The following experiments are considered: wavelength- or frequency-conversion of optical data signals, operation as demultiplexer or all-optical AND-gate, and finally operation as optical-phase conjugator for compensating deterministic pulse distortions caused by linear fiber dispersion and nonlinear self-phase modulation on the fiber.

© 1995 Optical Society of America