Building interactive high-bandwidth photonics simulation tools from first principles

Semiconductor and fiber amplifiers and lasers are amongst the most complex and critically important components in most modern optical telecommunications systems. The ever increasing demand for bandwidth places severe constraints on component design. Active materials need to be accurately characterized in terms of their optical properties. In addition, realistic simulation tools must be capable of resolving the multi-THz bandwidths while providing a rapid turn around to the system designer. We will report on the implementation of an extremely efficient algorithm running within an object-oriented simulation environment. As an illustration, we will present results showing how a WDM-based semiconductor optical amplifier and a TDM Mach-Zehnder interferometer gate can be optimized using rigorously computed and experimentally validated semiconductor optical material properties.