FDTD simulation of the nonlinear gain dynamics and modulation response of a semiconductor microcavity

Abstract

The method of FDTD solution of the full-wave vectorial Maxwell-Bloch equations for a two-level quantum system in 1D is applied to investigate the nonlinear gain spatio-temporal dynamics in an active semiconductor microcavity. The test structure used was 15 /spl mu/m long active medium slab (GaAs) at the left boundary of which a continuous-wave sinusoid source field (after smooth turn-on within 5 periods) at the atomic transition frequency (/spl lambda/ = 1.5 /spl mu/m) is launched.