Gain recovery of bulk semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract
The gain recovery time of 1.55-/spl mu/m bulk semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA's) with lengths from 500 to 1500 /spl mu/m has been measured with a continuous-wave (CW) probe in the time domain. It is shown to decrease with increasing length down to 60 ps for the longest SOA. This behavior is theoretically explained. A lower limit for the recovery time is observed and explained.