Experimental characterization of semiconductor optical amplifiers used as frequency converters by means of four-wave mixing

In this article we report extended measurements of four-wave mixing in bulk-semiconductor amplifiers using continuous wave sources. We demonstrate that four-wave mixing in semiconductor amplifiers permits realizing in the practice frequency conversion in the spectral range of utility for optical telecommunications. Efficiency larger than 1 have been demonstrated up to 1 THz with a low level of background noise. In addition, this technique has allowed us to investigate the carrier dynamics down to an equivalent time resolution of the order of few tens of femtoseconds.