Saturation Gain Characteristics of Quantum-Well Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

Abstract

Recently, there is an increasing interest onquantum well (QW) semiconductor optical amplifier in optical communications and optical signal processing applications. This paper addresses the dependence of saturation power on QW structure parameters. Expressions are given to assess this dependency and the results indicate that the saturation power is a decreasing function of number of wells, well thickness, and amplifier length and it is almost independent of barrier thickness.

Keywords

• Quantum-well semiconductor optical amplifier.