Gain saturation characteristics of traveling-wave semiconductor laser amplifiers in short optical pulse amplification

The gain saturation characteristics of traveling-wave semiconductor laser amplifiers (TWAs) are theoretically and experimentally investigated. In the amplification of an isolated pulse whose repetition period is short compared to the carrier lifetime, the gain saturation is related through the carrier lifetime to the gain saturation in CW amplification. When the output pulse energy is smaller than the saturation energy, short optical pulses can be amplified without pulse shape distortion, whereas high-energy pulses suffer from pulse shape distortion due to the temporal gain variation during the pulse radiation. FWHM pulse duration variation in amplification by TWAs depends on the input pulse shape. The pulse energy gain saturation was experimentally confirmed to be independent of pulse durations and to be determined only by the pulse energy. In extremely-high-repetition-rate pulse amplification, the saturation of the pulse energy gain is determined by the average signal power.>