This thesis is concerned with spectral, dynamical and noise properties of
semiconductor devices subject to perturbation by external light in the form of optical
wave-mixing, injection and feedback. Particular attention is paid to four-wave mixing
in semiconductor amplifiers, optical injection in vertical-cavity-surface-emitting
lasers and optical feedback in edge-emitting as well as vertical-cavity- surfaceemitting lasers.
In this thesis two simple and efficient experimental schemes are demonstrated
to perform polarisation insensitive wavelength conversion using four-wave mixing in
semiconductor amplifiers. This thesis also includes two experimental demonstrations
of polarisation independent spectral inversion without frequency shift.
Optical injection is shown to cause anti-phase oscillations in orthogonally
polarised components of vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser emission. It is
demonstrated here that optical injection may induce chaos in the polarisation-resolved
output of vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers. It is shown in the thesis that by
selectively enhancing the gain of one polarised mode relative to that of the
orthogonally polarised mode, optical injection can be used to stabilise polarisation
pulsations.
Optical feedback affects the noise properties of semiconductor lasers. Polarisationresolved relative-intensity-noises in vertical-cavity-surface-emitting lasers subject to optical feedback are shown here to be complementary. Optical feedback increases the relative-intensity noises of the dominant polarised mode. In the case of edge emitting
laser, a relative-intensity noise level below that of solitary laser operation is
demonstrated under high feedback strength.