Saturation effects in a terahertz asymmetric optical demultiplexer

Ultrafast optical demultiplexers capable of switching a user channel from data streams as high as hundreds of GHz are essential components in high speed optical time division multiplexed networks and optical signal processing. Terahertz optical asymmetric demultiplexers (TOADs) utilize novel interferometric configurations to explore these large and slow nonlinearities in semiconductor optical amplifiers.