Optics Express

Experimental demonstration of slow and superluminal light in semiconductor optical amplifiers

Bala Pesala, Zhangyuan Chen, Alexander V. Uskov, Connie J. Chang-Hasnain

Published Jan 1, 2006• 35 citations

Abstract

Tunable delays in semiconductor optical amplifiers are achieved via four wave mixing between a strong pump beam and a modulated probe beam. The delay of the probe beam can be controlled both electrically, by changing the SOA bias, and optically, by varying the pump power or the pump-probe detuning. For sinusoidal modulated signal at 0.5 GHz, a tunable delay of 1.6 ns is achieved. This corresponds to a RF phase change of 1.6 pi. For 1.3 ns optical pulses propagating through the SOA a delay of 0.59 ns is achieved corresponding to a delay-bandwidth product exceeding 0.45. For both the cases, slow light and superluminal light are observed as the pump-probe detuning is varied.

DOI: 10.1364/oe.14.012968

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