Amplification of high repetition rate picosecond pulses using an InGaAsP traveling-wave optical amplifier

We report amplification of picosecond pulses at high repetition rates in a 1.3 μm traveling-wave optical amplifier. At 4 GHz repetition rate, the small-signal chip gain is 20 dB, the amplified peak output power at the facet is 400 mW (corresponding to a pulse energy of 3 pJ/pulse), and there is no measurable pulse shape distortion of 12 ps pulses for gain compression up to 1.5 dB. We also directly measure the time constant of the gain recovery to be 100 ps.