Four-wave mixing in semiconductor laser amplifiers: Phase matching in configurations with three input waves

Summary form only given. Four-wave mixing (FWM) in semiconductor laser amplifiers (SLA) is of interest for both theoretical and experimental investigations. Conventional FWM experiments use a pump wave E1 (frequency omega 1) and a signal wave EA (omega A) copropagating with the pump. To efficiently create mixing products, both waves are required to have the same polarization, which is a major drawback for the application of FWM in optical communication networks. The addition of a second pumpwave E2 (omega 2) allows for both polarization-independent frequency conversion as well as investigations on phase matching in optical amplifiers.