Picosecond pulse amplification in AlGaAs flared amplifiers

Amplification of ultrashort pulses in a semiconductor flared amplifier is analyzed by using a two dimensional (2-D) time-domain BPM (beam propagation method) model including the effects of gain saturation, finite-gain bandwidth, self-phase modulation, index dispersion, carrier heating, and gain relaxation between successive pulses induced by carrier diffusion and recombination. The paper includes a presentation of the model and of the numerical resolution method, detailed analysis and discussion of the spatio-temporal pulse distortions in the case of picosecond and subpicosecond pulses and an evaluation of the device performance. The performance of the flared amplifier is evaluated considering the temporal length, the time-bandwidth product, the far field, the output energy as a function of the input energy, the injected current, and the repetition rate. While subpicosecond pulse amplification leads to strong distortions and to very low total gain, the flared amplifier is well adapted to the amplification of picosecond pulses at low-repetition rates.