Characteristics of time-gated Raman amplification in GaP–AlGaP semiconductor waveguides

Time-gated Raman amplification in the GaP–AlGaP waveguide is investigated using mode-locked Ti–sapphire pump source with 80 ps pulse width. Logarithmic Raman gain linearly increases with increasing the pump power density as long as the gain is less than about 10 dB. However, with further increasing the pump power it becomes nearly proportional to the square root of the pump power density. This is due to the fact that the equivalent linewidth of the pump pulse is comparable to the spectral full width half maximum of the Raman gain coefficient (24 GHz). Another point is that the amplified pulse broadens as the waveguide length exceeds the optical length corresponding to the pump pulse width because Raman amplification occurs mainly due to backward scattering.