Precise measurement of nonlinear propagation characteristics of sub-picosecond optical pulses in SOAs

Summary form only given. Optical functional devices such as wavelength converters and all-optical switches based on the optical nonlinearities in SOAs have been extensively studied recently. SOAs can amplify sub-picosecond optical pulses. However, the optical gain reduces and the pulse waveform distorts for high intensity pulses. This waveform distortion may deteriorate the conversion efficiency of the four-wave mixing and the extinction ratio of the all-optical switches. In this presentation, we report precise measurements of the deformation in the pulse waveforms using the cross-correlation technique with an improved time resolution of /spl sim/100 fs.