Experimental demonstration of nonreciprocal amplified spontaneous emission in a CoFe clad semiconductor optical amplifier for use as an integrated optical isolator

Abstract
Experimental results are presented for an integrated-optical-waveguide-isolator concept. This concept is based on inducing the transverse magneto-optic Kerr effect in a semiconductor InP -based optical amplifier (SOA) by using a transversely magnetized ferromagneticmetal as an electrical contact. As a result, the SOA exhibits nonreciprocal loss/gain for TM polarized light and is easily monolithically integrated with other InP -based active photonic devices. We have designed, fabricated and characterized prototype ferromagnetic metal-clad optical amplifiers for an operation wavelength of 1300 nm . In these first generation devices we obtained isolation strengths of up to 2.0 dB ∕ mm .