Saturation characteristics of Ga/sub 0.68/In/sub 0.32/As/GaInAsP/InP tensile-strained quantum-well semiconductor laser amplifiers with tapered-waveguide structures

With an aim toward a high-saturation power operation, a tapered-waveguide traveling-wave semiconductor laser amplifier (SLA) with a Ga/sub 0.68/In/sub 0.32/As/GaInAsP/InP tensile-strained quantum-well (QW) structure was investigated and realized for the first time. In spite of the high differential gain in the tensile-strained QW active layer, a high-saturation-output power of 18.5 dB (1 mW) (71 mW) and a high-maximum-output power of 20.4 dB(1 mW) (110 mW) were obtained with a narrow single-lobed beam-divergence property. These results indicate that the saturation performances of SLA's with tensile-strained active layers can be improved by the tapered-waveguide structures.<
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