Effect of saturation caused by amplified spontaneousemission on semiconductor optical amplifier performance

Abstract
The authors have investigated theoretically the effect of amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) on the spatial distribution of the carrier density. Measures of the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) performance, such as gain, saturation power and noise figure are derived. It is shown that the saturation due to the ASE strongly affects the SOA performance for device lengths > 500 µm. The results are compared with experimental data and found to be in good agreement.