Etudes sur le gain optique dans les amplificateurs optiques a semi-conducteurs a multiples puits quantiques C3T3 (Trois puits en compression et trois puits en tension)

The main objective of this study was to investigate the optical gain of the semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) with three compressive quantum wells and three tensile quantum wells (C3T3). The structure used for micro fabrication of these amplifiers was a double heterostructure based on the InGaAsP/InP successive layers and it has been specially designed to be insensitive to the polarization of light. The composition and the thickness of the layers of the structure as well as the height of the ridge and the distance between the ridge and the active region were obtained by simulation. The simulation software used to obtain these parameters has been developed by the Optoelectronics team from Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal.;We analyzed the spontaneous emission spectra of the C3T3 structure by performing standard photoluminescence measurements. The main factors which are responsible for the recombination of carriers, as well as for the broadening of the main peak have been discussed. We have also studied the influence of the excitation intensity on the position of the photoluminescence peak and on the spectrum bandwidth. The comparison between the measured and the theoretical spectra, which were calculated using a model developed in the Optoelectronics Laboratory, allowed us to analyze the various processes responsible for the shape, and for the position of the photoluminescence peak. These results are particularly important because there is a lack of information in the literature on the combined structures with tension/compression quantum wells.;The parameters required for the amplifiers to achieve polarization insensitivity, as well as the information regarding the properties of C3T3 structures were obtained by studying the amplified spontaneous emission, and the optical gain versus the active region length of the amplifier. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).;The interest for the quantum wells SOAs is mainly due to the fact that they have a large bandwidth (about 100 nm) for a high gain. Moreover, the technology of the semiconductors offers a great flexibility with respect to the gain spectrum, which can be appropriately selected by changing only the chemical composition of the active region. Because of their unique properties, SOAs are highly versatile devices that can be used for a large number of functional applications. Furthermore, they present the advantage of being easily integrated with other passive or active components for more complex functions.