Highly nondegenerate four‐wave mixing in semiconductor lasers due to spectral hole burning

Spectral hole burning in semiconductor lasers manifests as a nonlinear suppression of the mode gain by a few percent. In the presence of a probe wave, the same mechanism can lead to highly nondegenerate four‐wave mixing (NDFWM) by creating the dynamic gain and index gratings at the beat frequency of the pump and probe waves. Since the grating efficiency is governed by the intraband relaxation time (typically <1 ps), significant NDFWM can occur even for a pump‐probe detuning ∼100 GHz. We present the results for the conjugate reflectivity and the probe transmittivity when an InGaAsP laser is used as a traveling‐wave amplifier.

[1]  B. Zee,et al.  Broadening mechanism in semiconductor (GaAs) lasers: Limitations to single mode power emission , 1978 .

[2]  R. Fisher.  Optical Phase Conjugation , 1983 .

[3]  G P Agrawal,et al.  Four-wave mixing and phase conjugation in semiconductor laser media. , 1987, Optics letters.

[4]  R. Frey.  On-axis intracavity nearly degenerate four-wave mixing in lasers. , 1986, Optics letters.

[5]  Niloy K. Dutta,et al.  Long wavelength semiconductor lasers , 1988, Technical Digest., International Electron Devices Meeting.

[6]  Govind P. Agrawal,et al.  Gain nonlinearities in semiconductor lasers: Theory and application to distributed feedback lasers , 1987 .

[7]  Charles Howard Henry,et al.  Longitudinal mode self‐stabilization in semiconductor lasers , 1982 .

[8]  Rodney S. Tucker,et al.  High-speed modulation of semiconductor lasers , 1985 .

[9]  R. Boyd,et al.  Nearly degenerate four-wave mixing enhanced by the ac Stark effect , 1980 .

[10]  Frey,et al.  Bistable behavior of pump, probe, and conjugate signals through collinear intracavity nearly degenerate four-wave mixing. , 1986, Physical review. A, General physics.

[11]  R. Frey,et al.  Collinear nearly degenerate four-wave mixing in intracavity amplifying media , 1986 .

[12]  M. Sargent,et al.  Effects of signal detuning on phase conjugation , 1979 .

[13]  Masahiro Asada,et al.  Density-matrix theory of semiconductor lasers with relaxation broadening model-gain and gain-suppression in semiconductor lasers , 1985 .

[14]  Y. Nishimura,et al.  Spectral hole-burning and nonlinear-gain decrease in a band-to-level transition semiconductor laser , 1973 .

[15]  Robert Frey,et al.  Intracavity nearly degenerate four‐wave mixing in a (GaAl)As semiconductor laser , 1985 .