Multicanonical Evaluation of the Tails of the Probability Density Function of Semiconductor Optical Amplifier Output Power Fluctuations

This paper presents a multicanonical Monte Carlo method for simulating the tails of a probability density function (pdf) of the filtered output power from a semiconductor optical amplifier down to values of the order of 10
^-40
. The influence of memory effects on the pdf is examined in order to demonstrate the manner in which the calculated pdf approaches the true pdf with increasing integration time. The simulated pdf is shown to be in good agreement with a second-order analytic expression for the pdf.