Enhanced wide-bandwidth wavelength conversion via feedforward photomixing in semiconductor laser amplifiers

We have investigated a new technique for the enhancement of a wavelength conversion system based on nearly degenerate four wave mixing in a InGaAsP DFB semiconductor laser amplifier. We report enhanced wavelength conversion over 20 nm from 1.55 μm to 1.53 μm using feedforward photomixing from two independent source lasers to directly modulate the semiconductor laser amplifier. We find that the wavelength conversion efficiency is enhanced by 200% using this technique.