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Journal of Optical Communications

Electrically Tunable Slow and Fast Light using Coherent Population Oscillations in Quantum Dot Semiconductor Optical Amplifier

Ali Rostami, A. Lotfian, Reza Yadipour, Hamed Baghban, H. Rasooli

Published Jan 14, 2013• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Coherent population oscillations (CPO) in quantum dots (QDs) have been utilized in this article to achieve slow and fast light effects in a semiconductor optical amplifier. These phenomena have been achieved based on a pump-probe scheme and tuning the input current source. Coupled rate equations have been developed to determine the carrier dynamics and occupation probabilities. The effects of barrier, wetting layer and excited state densities have been included for CPO phenomenon occurring between the ground states. A quantum disc model embedded in another disc has been assumed for modeling the QDs and density matrix elements are used to obtain induced polarization at the signal frequency after determining the energy states and state probabilities. Tunable absorption dip, corresponding refractive index variation and group index, exhibit widely tunable slow and fast light characteristics by changing the bias condition.

DOI
10.1515/joc-2013-0005

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•Jan 1, 2007•2 citations
Coherent population oscillations (CPO) in quantum dots (QDs) have been utilized in this article to achieve slow and fast light effects in a semiconductor optical amplifier. These phenomena have been achieved based on a pump-probe scheme and tuning the input current source. Coupled rate equations have been developed to determine the carrier dynamics and occupation probabilities. The effects of barrier, wetting layer and excited state densities have been included for CPO phenomenon occurring between the ground states. A quantum disc model embedded in another disc has been assumed for modeling the QDs and density matrix elements are used to obtain induced polarization at the signal frequency after determining the energy states and state probabilities. Tunable absorption dip, corresponding refractive index variation and group index, exhibit widely tunable slow and fast light characteristics by changing the bias condition.
Coherent population oscillation (CPO) is a successful method used to implement semiconductorbased slow light using the coherent pump-probe effect. The first demonstration was carried out in semiconductormultiple quantumwells (MQWs) [1-3] soon after the experimental demonstration of slow light in ruby crystal [4,5]. Later, slow light based on CPO in semiconductor QWs and quantum dots (QDs)was also successfully demonstrated at room temperature [6-10], and the slow-light regime was soon extended to the corresponding fast-light regime in semiconductor gainmedia [11-17] using a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) alone or combined with an electroabsorbtion (EA) section. The basicworking principle of slow light based onmost pump-probe schemes is to decrease the group velocity vg using the sharp variation of the refractive index ∂n′/∂ω within a narrow frequency range: vg = c ng = c n′ + ω ∂n′ , (2.1) where ng = n′ + ω∂n′/∂ω is the group index n′ is the real part of the refractive index n For the CPO case, the required sharp variation of the refractive index originates from the population oscillation induced by the pump and probe signals applied to a two-level system, as indicated in Figure 2.1. The induced population oscillation generates a new polarization component and changes the susceptibility and thus the refractive index experienced by the signal. In semiconductor quantum structures, this two-level system can be the heavy-hole (HH) exciton [1-3,6,18] of QWs and QDs, or the valence and conductionground states of QDs [18,19]. In principle, as long as the optical transition between the two states is dipole-allowed, the slow light based on CPO can be implemented.
Slow and fast light in quantum-well (QW) and quantum-dot (QD) semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) using nonlinear quantum optical effects are presented.We demonstrate electrical and optical controls of fast light using the coherent population oscillation (CPO) and four wave mixing (FWM) in the gain regime of QW SOAs.We then consider the dependence on the wavelength and modal gain of the pump in QW SOAs.To enhance the tunable photonic delay of a single QW SOA, we explore a serial cascade of multiple amplifiers.A model for the number of QW SOAs in series with variable optical attenuation is developed and matched to the experimental data.We demonstrate the scaling law and the bandwidth control by using the serial cascade of multiple QW SOAs.Experimentally, we achieve a phase change of 160 • and a scaling factor of four at 1 GHz using the cascade of four QW SOAs.Finally, we investigate CPO and FWM slow and fast light of QD SOAs.The experiment shows that the bandwidth of the time delay as a function of the modulation frequency changes in the absorption and gain regimes due to the carrier-lifetime variation.The tunable phase shift in QD SOA is compared between the ground-and first excited-state transitions with different modal gains.
We develop a model for slow light based on the coherent population oscillation of quantum dots at room temperature. With the absorption dip and corresponding variation of the refractive index due to the coherent population beating induced by the pump and probe signal, quantum dots can be used as a slow-light medium. Our theoretical model matches the experimental results very well. We also experimentally and theoretically demonstrate that both the forward-bias injection current and reverse-bias voltage can change the group index in a semiconductor quantum-dot waveguide. Our results indicate that quantum-dot devices can be potentially used as electrically and optically controllable slow light devices
Slow and fast light processes, based on both structural and material dispersions, are realized in a wide tuning range in this article. Coherent population oscillations (CPO) in electrically tunable quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers lead to a variable group index ranging from the background index ( n bgd ) to ∼ 30. A photonic crystal waveguide is then dispersion engineered and a group index of 260 with the normalized delay-bandwidth product (NDBP) of 0.65 is achieved in the proposed waveguide. Using comprehensive numerical simulations, we show that a considerable enhancement of slow light effect can be achieved by combining both the material and the structural dispersions in the proposed active QDPCW structure. We compare our developed FDTD results with analytical results and show that there is good agreement between the results, which demonstrates that the proposed electrically-tunable slow light idea is obtainable in the QDPCW structure. We achieve a total group index in a wide tuning range from n bgd to ∼ 1500 at the operation bandwidth, which shows a significant enhancement compared with the schemes based only on material or structural dispersions. The tuning range and also NDBP of the slow light scheme are much larger than those of the electrically tunable CPO process.
Controlling the group velocity of light has great potential applications in future optical communication, photonic computing, and microwave signal processing. These applications have recently triggered immense experimental and theoretical interest in the research community. Numerous studies report large optical delays while sacrificing many important aspects of engineering feasibility: bandwidth, device compactness, room temperature operation, ease of integration, and minimized signal insertion loss. Slow and fast light in the quantum-dot and quantum-well semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) address many of these characteristics. First, this dissertation presents variable slow light in quantum-dot SOAs using population oscillation in an absorptive medium. Bandwidth tuning of slow light is observed with forward and reverse bias of quantum-dots. Second, the study explores four-wave mixing and population oscillation in a quantum-well gain medium. Control of optical advance and bandwidth is achieved by the medium's electrical bias or the optical pump power. Moreover, the fast light in the cascade of N number of quantum-well SOAs is experimentally and theoretically investigated. The cascaded scheme uses SOA-to-SOA attenuators to achieve active delay-bandwidth control. Finally, a large delay-bandwidth scheme is presented in which slow-to-fast light is observed by means of absorption to gain switching. More than a half cycle of tunable delay at 1 GHz bandwidth is achieved at optical frequencies.