Experimental demonstration of nonreciprocal amplified spontaneous emission in a CoFe clad semiconductor optical amplifier for use as an integrated optical isolator

Experimental results are presented for an integrated-optical-waveguide-isolator concept. This concept is based on inducing the transverse magneto-optic Kerr effect in a semiconductor InP-based optical amplifier (SOA) by using a transversely magnetized ferromagnetic metal as an electrical contact. As a result, the SOA exhibits nonreciprocal loss/gain for TM polarized light and is easily monolithically integrated with other InP-based active photonic devices. We have designed, fabricated and characterized prototype ferromagnetic metal-clad optical amplifiers for an operation wavelength of 1300 nm. In these first generation devices we obtained isolation strengths of up to 2.0 dB/mm. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.