Active picosecond optical pulse compression in semiconductor optical amplifiers

A novel technique is proposed to compress and amplify a weak picosecond optical pulse by utilizing a copropagating intense pump pulse in semiconductor optical amplifiers. It is shown that, simply by adjusting the time delay between the two pulses, a controlled compression of the pulsewidth by up to a factor of /spl sim/4 with pulse energy amplification of up to /spl sim/16 dB can be achieved simultaneously. Furthermore, a compressed pulse shape with strongly damped wings is also observed. The shortest achievable pulsewidth is demonstrated to be dependent on the frequency detuning and pump pulse properties.