Picosecond soliton transmission using concatenated nonlinear optical loop-mirror intensity filters

N J Smith, Nick Doran

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

The issues involved in employing nonlinear optical loop mirrors (NOLMs) as intensity filters in picosecond soliton transmission were examined in detail. It was shown that inserting NOLMs into a periodically amplified transmission line allowed picosecond solitons to be transmitted under conditions considered infeasible until now. The loop mirrors gave dual function, removing low-power background dispersive waves through saturable absorption and applying a negative feedback mechanism to control the amplitude of the solitons. The stochastic characteristics of the pulses that were due to amplifier spontaneous-emission noise were investigated, and a number of new properties were determined. In addition, the mutual interaction between pulses was also significantly different from that observed for longer-duration solitons. The impact of Raman scattering in the computations was included and it was shown that soliton self-frequency shifts may be eliminated by appropriate bandwidth restrictions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1117-1125
Number of pages9
JournalJournal of the Optical Society of America B
Volume12
Issue number6
Publication statusPublished - Jun 1995

Keywords

  • nonlinear optical loop mirror
  • saturable absorbers
  • picosecond soliton transmission systems
  • optical amplifier
  • self-frequency shift
  • bandwidth filtering

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