Numerical study of carrier reservoir semiconductor optical amplifier-based all-optical XOR logic gate

Abstract

The long carrier lifetime of the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) limits its operation speed and exploitation as ultrafast nonlinear switching element. Therefore, an alternative SOA with a faster carrier lifetime is desired for high speed photonic applications. In this paper, we employ the carrier reservoir SOA (CR-SOA) for the first time to demonstrate through simulations the feasibility of all-optical exclusive-OR (XOR) logic gate at 100 Gb/s. For this purpose, a pair of CR-SOAs are incorporated in a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer. The variation of the quality factor (QF) against the key operating parameters is examined for both CR-SOAs- and conventional SOAs-based XOR gate at 100 Gb/s, including the effect of amplified spontaneous emission. The results show that not only higher but also acceptable QF is obtained at 100 Gb/s only when using CR-SOAscompared to conventional bulk SOAs, i.e. QF = 18.5 versus 3.3, respectively.

KEYWORDS:

• All-optical XOR logic gate
• Carrier reservoir semiconductor optical amplifier
• Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Acknowledgments

Amer Kotb thanks the CAS President’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) (grant number 2019FYT0002) and the Talented Young Scientist Program (TYSP) in China for supporting this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Amer Kotb thanks the CASPresident’s International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) (grant number 2019FYT0002) and the Talented Young Scientist Program (TYSP) in China for supporting this work.