Gain saturation properties of a polarization insensitive semiconductor amplifier implemented with tensile and compressive strain quantum wells

The gain saturation properties of a 1.3 μm polarization insensitive semiconductor amplifier implemented with tensile and compressive strain quantum well active region are experimentally investigated in order to determine how well the amplifier maintains its polarization insensitivity in the saturation regime. The amplifier has unsaturated gain of 12 dB and in the saturation regime the maximum observed gain imbalance between TE and TM gains is 0.9 dB. The measured 3 dB saturation output power is 5 mW.