Broadband highly bright radiation sources based on a superluminescent diode and a semiconductor optical amplifier

It is shown experimentally that the use of a travelling-wave semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) significantly improves the output characteristics of a superluminescent diode (SLD), increasing, in particular, its output power or broadening its emission band. By using SOAs based on separate-confinement double (InGa)PAs heterostructures emitting at 1300 nm and different SLDs as input radiation sources, there were obtained up to 50 mW of cw power at the output of a single-mode fibre and the emission band with the half-width up to 70 nm.