• Title : Cross Gain Modulation in Quantum-Dot SOA at 1550 nm
• Author : G. Contestabile, A. Maruta, S. Sekiguchi, K. Morito, M. Sugawara, and K. Kitayama
• Journal : to appear in IEEE J. Quantum Electron.
• Abstract : We experimentally study the Cross Gain Modulation (XGM) in an InAs/InGaAsP/InP Columnar Quantum Dot Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (QD- SOA) around 1550 nm. We report 13 nm wavelength conversion of 10, 20, 40, 80 and 160 Gb/s return to zero (RZ) signals. We find that pure XGM is effective for wavelength conversion without significant pattern-effects up to around 40 Gb/s. At higher bit-rates, distortion free conversion can be obtained exploiting jointly XGM and some cross phase modulation (XPM) that arises at the same time in the amplifier. This can be easily made by using a slightly blue-shifted output band-pass filter. Testing the signal integrity by means of Q2 factor analysis, we also find that the XGM transfer function attenuates the input intensity noise. Finally, we show how the output inverse-return-to-zero (IRZ) signals obtained in the XGM conversion can be format converted back to RZ by sideband filtering.

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