Compared propagation characteristics of superluminal and slow light in SOA and EDFA based on rectangle signals

Based on the general mechanism of the coherent population oscillations (CPO) in the Semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) and Erbium doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA), the group time delay of rectangle signal propagating in the active media is deduced. Compared with the sinusoidal signal, the time delay difference between the fundamental harmonics (FHFD: fundamental harmonic fractional delay) is first investigated in detail for the rectangle signal which is more popularly used in the digital signal systems. The plenty of simulations based on the propagation equations and some experiments for the sinusoidal and rectangle signals are used to analyze the differences and evaluate the slow and superluminal light effects. Furthermore, the time delay/advance always takes place accompanying with the signal distortion, which is evaluated by the total harmonic distortion (THD). The distortion caused by the SOA is smaller than that by the EDFA. A factor Q which is defined to evaluate the trade-off between the FHFD and the THD, shows that higher input power or higher optical gain is better for optical signal processing and optical telecommunications, and the SOA is more suitable for the higher modulation frequency (>10 GHz).