TUNABLE WAVELENGTH FILTERS BASED ON NONLINEAR-OPTICAL INTERACTIONS INSEMICONDUCTOR AMPLIFIERS

A novel class of narrow-band tunable wavelength filters is proposed an d evaluated, Wavelength selectivity of the proposed tilters is derived from the finite time response of an optical nonlinearity. The nonline arity is gain saturation in semiconductor optical amplifier structures . The filters are shown to have very narrow passbands tunable over the entire semiconductor gain bandwidth. The key to filter implementation is a device configuration in which the wa Fe-mixing products can be i solated from the amplified inputs. Three integrated optics compatible configurations are considered and shown to have high filter throughput s 34 to 180% and subangstrom bandwidths.