Dissipative solitons in semiconductor optical amplifiers

Abstract

We present recent experimental and numerical results for dissipative propagating spatial solitons in periodically-patterned semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs). These devices are designed to suppress the destabilization of solitons due to the amplification of noise in the soliton tails in uniformly-pumped SOAs. We briefly describe the fabrication of these devices. The zero-parameter and non-local characteristics of the solitons are studied experimentally and compared with simulations. We have also investigated soliton interactions, accounting for the effects of non-locality and zero-parameter properties.