Experimental study of four-wave mixing in semiconductor laser amplifier and its application to dispersion compensation in mid-span spectral inversion system

Properties of four-wave mixing (FWM) in the semiconductor laser amplifier are studied experimentally. The optical phase conjugation of the mixing wave is applied to compensate the chromatic dispersion of transmission fiber. Experimental results of the transmission of short optical pulses with 12-ps width over 204 km standard single mode fiber is presented. The results confirm that mid-span spectral inversion (MSSI) employing FWM in a semiconductor laser amplifier is one of potential dispersion compensation techniques for optical transmission over standard single mode fiber with bit rate beyond 40 Gb/s.