All-optical switching by counterpropagating operation in cascaded semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract

We propose a simple, compact, integrative, flexible, power-efficient, and all-optical switch. The operation is based on self-induced gain modulation leading to nonlinear transmittance with a threshold level dependent on input powers of the data and control signals counterpropagating in cascaded semiconductor optical amplifiers. We demonstrate numerically the all-optical switch with small-signal modulation, low-power consumption, high-output power, and high-output extinction ratio.