Demonstration of ultrafast all-optical wavelength conversion utilizing birefringence in semiconductor optical amplifiers

High-extinction-ratio wavelength conversion has been demonstrated in a semiconductor optical amplifier using a mixture of cross-gain and cross-phase modulation in a polarization rotation technique. 40-ps-wide pulses at 1311 nm have been generated using 47-ps, 5.7-mW peak-power input pulses at 1300 nm. Excellent agreement with experiment has been obtained using a computer model.