Applications of highly nonlinear chalcogenide glass fibers inultrafast all-optical switches

Applications of chalcogenide glass fibers in ultrafast all-optical switches have been investigated. Ultrafast all-optical switching has been accomplished in an optical Kerr shutter configuration using As₂S₃-based glass fiber. The nonlinear refractive index of the As₂S₃-based glass is estimated to be n₂=4.0×10^-14 (cm²/W ), which is higher by two orders of magnitude than that of silica glass fiber. Nonlinear absorption due to two-photon absorption has been revealed to be negligible, and up to a 2π-phase shift has been obtained. Switching speed and switching power were investigated experimentally and through calculations. A switching time of 12 ps and a switching power of 5 W can be achieved using a 10-ps gate pulse and only a 1-m chalcogenide glass fiber. However, signal transformation due to cross-phase modulation and group velocity dispersion is not negligible for shorter gate pulses. Lower switching power is possible by reducing the transmission loss and the core area and by optimizing the driving conditions     

All-optical bit-pattern matching with photonic switching arrays

An all-optical XOR logic circuit is demonstrated using photonic switching arrays that integrate multiple-quantum-well reflection modulators and phototransistors. The switching element performs a Boolean logic A B operation on two binary input light signals that are separately incident on the phototransistor and modulator. The XOR logic function is derived by optical coupling of the switching elements. The device features high contrast that enables high-speed bit pattern matching in parallel     

Ultrafast all-optical switching using highly nonlinear chalcogenideglass fiber

Ultrafast all-optical switching with a switching power of 14 W was demonstrated in a Kerr shutter configuration using a single-mode As₂S₃-based glass fiber only 48 cm long. The nonlinear refractive index of the fiber was evaluated from the switching characteristics to be n₂=4.2×10^-14 (cm²/W), which is higher by two orders of magnitude than silica glass fiber     

A novel multilevel coherent optical system: 4-quadrature signaling

A novel multilevel coherent optical system is proposed. It is based on the exploitation of the property that the electromagnetic field propagating in a single-mode optical fiber can be represented by a four-dimensional vector whose components are the phase and quadrature terms of the two polarization components of the electrical field. This allows a wider use of the resources of the electromagnetic field for information transmission in order to obtain a spectrally efficient modulation format with a limited end. The net performance gain with respect to multilevel amplitude and phase modulation (N-APK) and N-PSK increases with an increase in the number of levels N. For instance, for N=32 the gain is 1.6 and 7.7 dB with respect to N-APK and N-PSK systems. The effect of laser phase noise on the system performance is evaluated     

Effects of group velocity dispersion on self/cross phase modulationin a nonlinear Sagnac interferometer switch

Time-resolved numerical analysis of a nonlinear Sagnac interferometer switch (NSIS) reveals that the combined effects of group velocity dispersion (GVD), self phase modulation, cross phase modulation, and pump-probe walk-off seriously degrade switching performance when the soliton number N of the pump pulse is under 5. This means that the peak power of short pump pulses cannot be reduced to less than the critical value at N>5 to prevent the effect of GVD. This restriction is more severe for pump pulses in the anomalous dispersion region than for those in the normal dispersion region because of higher-order soliton compression. System designs for time-division demultiplexers that use NSISs and picosecond pump pulses generated by a laser-diode coupled to erbium-doped fiber amplifiers are discussed. It is found that 1:32 demultiplexing from 160 to 5 Gb/s and 1:8 demultiplexing from 80 to 10 Gb/s with a switching contrast of more than 60 are possible using diode-laser-pumped 1- and 2-ps pump pulses, respectively     

Limiter-discriminator detection of a coherent optical heterodyneM-ary CPFSK receiver

The performance of a coherent optical M-ary continuous-phase frequency-shift-keying (CPFSK) receiver using limiter-discriminator (L-D) detection is investigated. It is shown that L-D detection of CPFSK optical signals offers the best performance for a large normalized IF beat spectral linewidth, ΔνT. When the modulation index is unity, the receiver is immune to laser phase noise and can produce (M/4) exp (-SNR) symbol error probability, which may be considered as the upper bound if the optimal modulation index is used (SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio per symbol). Optimum modulation indexes are 0.8 and 1 at ΔνT=1% and ΔνT=2%, respectively, for M=4, 8, and 16     

Phase-noise-free coherent optical communication system utilizingdifferential polarization shift keying (DPolSK)

An optical communication system utilizing differential polarization modulation, which is free from phase noise, is discussed. The system proved to be immune to essentially all phase jitter. Separate square operations for the x and y channels, followed by multiplication of the two-channel outputs, effectively removed phase jitter. The delay-and-multiply circuit was directly incorporated in the paths of the frequency shifter and the coupler to the local oscillator laser, minimizing the optical power loss     

Efficient compression of high-energy laser pulses

Limitations caused by stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) for laser pulse compression in traditional fiber-grating compressors are discussed. It is shown that the scheme utilizing fibers of length L exceeding the length of the dispersion walk off L_{walk off} of pump pulses and SRS permits one to obtain high-contrast compressed pulses, their energy being no more than a few nJ, and the ultimate width being proportional to the square root of the initial pulse width. For the compression utilizing fibers of length L<L_{walk off}, the pulse energies are not limited, but the compression factor is limited to the value of 32, and the compressed pulses have a low-intensity wide pedestal. A theoretical model of high-energy pulse compression with simultaneous pedestal suppression by the polarization technique using nonlinear birefringence of the fiber is discussed. This technique is compared to the spectral windowing technique     

Wavelength dependence of 1/f noise in the light output oflaser diodes: an experimental study

The optical power emitted by a monomode GaAlAs laser is filtered with a monochromator. The 1/f noise in the filtered emission is found to be directly dependent on the noncoherent emission, such as S_pαP_nc^m. Here s_p is the spectral density of the 1/f fluctuations, P_nc is the average noncoherent power, m=3/2 under spontaneous emission, and m=4 in the superradiation and laser regions. Study of the 1/f noise in the optical power in a band centered at the laser wavelength and with variable bandwidth shows three operating regions. (1) LED region (at low currents): the fluctuations with a 1/f spectrum are uncorrelated in wavelength. (2) Superradiation region (at currents close to the threshold): the fluctuations are correlated. (3) Laser region: the 1/f noise apparently is dominated by noncoherent emission within a small optical band around the laser wavelength     

FDMA-FSK star network with a tunable optical filter demultiplexer

An optical frequency-division-multiple-access (FDMA) star network is analyzed and demonstrated experimentally using two 45-Mb/s frequency-shift-keyed (FSK) laser channels at 1.5 μm. A tunable fiber Fabry-Perot (FFP) filter is used to select channels and convert FSK to intensity modulation for direct detection. The analysis predicts and experiment supports a minimum channel spacing of about six times bit rate B for a single FFP. These constraints are similar to those for more complex heterodyne demultiplexing. Estimates show that a network with 1000 users, independent of bit rate, is feasible with a tandem FFP. For B=1 Gb/s per channel the network capacity would be 1 Tb/s     

Asymptotic distortion spectrum of clipped, DC-biased, Gaussiannoise [optical communication]

Consider a zero-mean, stationary Gaussian process g(t ), to which a large positive constant A has been added. Define a distortion process h_A(t) as equal to g(t)+A when the latter is negative and equal to zero otherwise. The author calculates the power spectrum of the process h_A(t) asymptotically as A becomes large. The results have application for estimating the nonlinear-distortion power in the recovered signal when many frequency-multiplexed subcarriers collectively modulate a laser's output power, as would be the case for CATV transmission over an optical fiber. The process h_A(t) then models the nonlinear distortion caused by occasional clipping of the DC-biased laser input     

New applications of a sinusoidally driven InGaAsP electroabsorptionmodulator to in-line optical gates with ASE noise reduction effect

The authors propose new applications of a sinusoidally driven InGaAsP electroabsorption modulator to an inline optical gate for a 2R (reshape and retiming) repeater in optical amplifier systems, an n :1 optical demultiplexer in time division multiplexing systems, and an optical switch. The small polarization dependence of the modulator is essential for inline use. By utilizing the monotonic increase of the extinction ratio with increasing applied voltage, the electroabsorption modulator driven by a large-signal sinusoidal voltage can produce a time domain square-shaped gate function with variable gate width. Furthermore, amplified spontaneous emission noise of optical amplifier systems can be reduced in both time and wavelength domains at the off-state of the modulator, due to noninterferometric wide wavelength operation of the modulator. Experimental results for a 2R repeater, an n:1 (n=4, 8) optical demultiplexer, and optical gates for switching are also demonstrated at over 10-Gb/s repetition rate     

Measurement of a VPE-transported DFB laser with blue-shiftedfrequency modulation response from DC to 2 GHz

The frequency modulation characteristics of a VPE-transported 1.53 μm wavelength GaInAsP-InP DFB semiconductor diode laser was measured. Below approximately 0.7 mW optical output power per facet, it exhibited a smooth, blue-shifted, frequency modulation response from DC to 2 GHz. In the modulation frequency range of 10 MHz to 100 MHz it exhibited a |Δf/ΔI| of 0.5-1.8 GHz/mA, depending on the biasing level     

On multilevel block modulation codes

The multilevel technique for combining block coding and modulation is investigated. A general formulation is presented for multilevel modulation codes in terms of component codes with appropriate distance measures. A specific method for constructing multilevel block modulation codes with interdependency among component codes is proposed. Given a multilevel block modulation code C with no interdependency among the binary component codes, the proposed method gives a multilevel block modulation code C' that has the same rate as C, a minimum squared Euclidean distance not less than that of C, a trellis diagram with the same number of states as that of C, and a smaller number of nearest neighbor codewords than that of C . Finally, a technique is presented for analyzing the error performance of block modulation codes for an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel based on soft-decision maximum likelihood decoding. Error probabilities of some specific codes are evaluated by simulation and upper bounds based on their Euclidean weight distributions     

Picosecond pulse generation in a GaAs/GaAlAs single-quantum-welllaser at the first and second subband transition

Picosecond optical pulses are generated in a single-quantum-well laser at the n=2 or n=1 quantized transition by tuning the optical gain spectra via the intracavity losses. The results for the generated pulses are discussed with respect to the influence of differential gain (dg/dN) and nonlinear gain saturation (∈) effects     

Enhanced multiwave mixing interactions in semiconductor opticalamplifiers via pump modulation

It is demonstrated that, by modulating a semiconductor optical amplifier at a frequency determined by the detuning between the pump and probe in a collinear four wave mixing geometry, the enhancements in gain and reflectivity of two to three orders of magnitude are possible for remarkably small modulation depths (m=10^-2). The mechanism of frequency mixing using population pulsations in semiconductor laser amplifiers is summarized. In particular, the modification to the standard geometry to achieve enhancements is discussed. The appropriate four wave mixing equations including current modulation terms are solved analytically in the undepleted pump approximation. The analytic forms for transmission gain and phase conjugate reflectivity in several cases of interest are computed. In particular, the case in which four wave mixing is absent and energy transfer occurs solely as a result of the current modulation is examined     

Quantum-well SEED optical oscillators

Oscillation at 110 MHz in a GaAs-GaAlAs quantum-well SEED (self-electrooptic effect device) optical oscillator is considered. Optimization of device length and optical pump wavelength for high-frequency oscillation is discussed. Frequency tuning is obtained by adjusting the oscillator bias voltage or optical pump power, and the oscillator can be injection locked to modulated optical signals. Frequency fluctuations caused by perturbative Gaussian noise and 1/f frequency noise are observed; the 1/f noise in an 8.5-MHz oscillator limited the minimum frequency variance to 230 Hz²     

Performance analysis of optical heterodyne PSK receivers in thepresence of phase noise and adjacent channel interference

A phase-shift-keying (PSK) optical heterodyne receiver using synchronous detection by means of a Costas phase-locked loop (PLL) is investigated. Taking into account the laser phase noise and adjacent channel interference (ACI), an expression of the phase error variance is derived and error probability calculation is performed. Plots of the error probability versus the number of photons per bit are presented as a function of the optical domain channel spacing (D) and for several linewidth-to-bit-rate ratios (δf/R_b ). Relative sensitivity penalties, based on the performance with and without ACI, are evaluated for several combinations of D and δf/R_b. It is shown that, if lasers with larger linewidths are used, the frequency separation between optical carriers has to be increased in order to allow the same relative sensitivity penalty     

An 8 mm length nonblocking 4×4 optical switch array

A novel single-mode-single-slip-structure S³ optical switch using carrier-induced refractive index change is proposed as a unit cell for a small polarization-independent nonblocking N×N optical switch array. Sixteen S³ optical switches have been integrated into a nonblocking 4×4 optical switch array on an InP substrate. The 8-mm-length InGaAsP/InP 4×4 optical array has shown satisfactory switching characteristics and is suitable for larger scale integration of optical switch arrays and also for integration with other active optical devices such as laser diodes     

5 Gbit/s direct optical DPSK modulation of a 1530-nm DFB laser

5 Gb/s direct optical differential-phase-shift-keying (DPSK) modulation of a 1530-nm distributed feedback (DFB) laser is demonstrated using injection current modulation with a bipolar signal format. Delay demodulation is performed using an interferometer with a delay time T equal to the duration of one bit. The input and differentially encoded nonreturn to zero (NRZ) signals are shown. The bipolar modulation current signal is basically the time derivative of the NRZ signal. There was no degradation of the optical DPSK signal due to thermal frequency modulation of the laser. The direct DPSK modulation technique avoids the insertion loss and systems complexity of external DPSK modulators