Amplification of 1.5 ps pulses by a semiconductor laser amplifier

1.5 ps pulses with a time bandwidth product of 0.35, obtained from a 1.5 mu m mode locked semiconductor laser, have been amplified without temporal or spectral distortion using a semiconductor laser amplifier with an unsaturated gain of 25 dB. Travelling wave semiconductor laser amplifiers are widely expected to become key components of optical communication systems in the future. These systems are ultimately likely to have signal bandwidths approaching that of the optical fibre and individual channel bandwidths approaching 100 GHz are likely in the foreseeable future. It has already been shown that 3-20 ps pulses at repetition frequencies of 0.1-6 GHz can be amplified without temporal or spectral distortion provided the gain of the amplifier is not saturated by more than a few dB. In this paper, the authors report, for the first time, the amplification of 1.5 ps pulses emitted at 1.5 mu m at repetition frequencies between 1.6 and 8 GHz.