We present results from theoretical analysis of the phase dynamics in semiconductor optical amplifiers(SOAs).In particular,we focus on an aspect of the ultra-fast phase recovery that currently does not have adequate in-depth theoretical analysis and clear explanation of the physical mechanism.We build up a numerical model to analyze the ultra-fast phase recovery of semiconductor optical amplifiers in details.To investigate the phase response characteristics,we analyze the different contributions to the phase shift,including intra-band effects such as carrier heating,spectral hole burning,and inter-band effects such as carrier depletion.In addition,the impact of the pulses energy on phase shift is also investigated.Based on the analysis of phase response characteristics,we further explain the reason why a delay occurs between gain response and phase response.The analysis results are in good agreement with the reported experimental results.The results presented in this paper are useful for the SOA-based ultra-fast optical signal processing,such as optical switches,optical logic gates,and optical Add/Drop multiplexer.
We propose a new method for characterizing optical phase modulators based on phase modulation-to-intensity modulation (PM-to-IM) conversion in dispersive fibers.The fiber dispersion spectrally alters the relative phasing of the phase-modulated signal and leads to the PM-to-IM conversion,which is extended to measure the modulation efficiency of optical phase modulators.In the demonstration,the frequency-dependent modulation index and half-wave voltage are experimentally measured for a commercial phase modulator.Compared with conventional methods,the proposed method works without the restriction of small-signal operations,and allows swept-frequency measurement with high resolution and accuracy by using a vector network analyzer.
