The characteristics of a semiconductor laser operating in the threshold region are investigated systematically. In this transition region from below to above threshold, the linewidth versus injection current characteristic is found to be nonmonotonic: a local minimum of linewidth just below threshold and a local maximum just above threshold are confirmed experimentally. If a semiconductor laser...

We report the first Fourier domain modelocked (FDML) laser constructed using optical parametric amplifier (OPA) in conjunction with an erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA), centered at approximately 1555 nm, to the best of our knowledge. We utilize a one-pump OPA and a C-band EDFA in serial configuration with a tunable Fabry-Perot interferometer to generate a hybrid FDML spectrum. Results demons...

A microstructured polymer optical fiber doped with Rhodamine 6G dye was fabricated and demonstrated as an optical amplifier and a fiber laser. As an amplifier, the fiber achieved a gain in excess of 30 dB. As a pulsed fiber laser, the fiber exhibited a threshold of 20 microJ, a slope efficiency of 18%, and a lifetime as high as 130,000 shots at 10 Hz. The maximum output energy was 16 microJ. Th...

We demonstrated experimentally the generation of 65-microJ, 5.8-fs optical pulses with an ultrabroad bandwidth (540-1000 nm) by the use of a double-pass angularly-dispersed non-collinear optical parametric amplifier. We also confirmed up to the 95-microJ output from the amplifier when seed pulses were not pre-compensated for. Furthermore, we confirmed that the broadband pump pulses brought in t...

We report the fabrication of an integrated LiNbO Y-junction synchronized double phase modulator fully packaged for RF-application up to 40 GHz. This optical modulator allows for delivering simultaneously counter-phase high-speed modulation and coupling for two input channels. It was designed for application to fiber-optical parametric amplifier and wavelength converters for suppressing idler sp...

In this chapter, we propose several schemes for fiber amplifiers which are all using fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) as the key elements for their advantages of better uniformity, higher contrast ratio and lower cost. Several applications using FBG-based fiber amplifiers are also introduced. Therefore, this chapter initiates the overview of FBGs characteristics in Sec. 1, then addresses the FBGs pl...

All-Optical Re-amplification and Re-shaping (2R) exploiting spectral shift induced by Self-Phase-Modulation (SPM) in a Semiconductor Optical Amplifier (SOA) is presented. Theoretical model taking into account Carrier Density (CD), Carrier Heating (CH) and Spectral Hole Burning (SHB) is experimentally validated using 3 ps optical pulses.

An optical receiver using a CMOS-compatible avalanche photodetector (CMOS-APD) is demonstrated. The CMOS-APD is fabricated with 0.18 μm standard CMOS technology and the optical receiver is implemented by using the CMOS-APD and a transimpedance amplifier on a board. The optical receiver can detect 6.25-Gb/s data with the help of the series inductive peaking effect.