4-WAVE-MIXING EFFICIENCY IN TRAVELING-WAVE SEMICONDUCTOR OPTICAL AMPLIFIERS AT HIGH SATURATION

We report an experimental investigation of the conversion efficiency of a frequency converter based on four-wave mixing in semiconductor optical amplifiers. We find that the maximum of conversion efficiency has a nonlinear dependence on the unsaturated gain of the device. The observed features are explained by the presence of the Auger and bimolecular recombination.