High-repetition-rate ultrashort pulsed fiber ring laser using hybrid mode locking.

We propose and demonstrate a hybrid mode-locked erbium-doped fiber ring laser by combining the rational harmonic mode-locking technique and passive mode locking based on nonlinear polarization rotation in a highly nonlinear photonic crystal fiber. By carefully adjusting the modulation frequency and the polarization controllers in the cavity, a 30 GHz pulse train with improved stability and narrower pulse width is generated. The pulse width at 30 GHz using rational harmonic mode locking alone is 5.8 ps. This hybrid scheme narrows the pulse width to 1.9 ps at the repetition rate of 30 GHz. Numerical simulations are carried out that show good agreement with the experimental results.

High-speed ultrashort pulse fiber ring laser using charcoal nanoparticles.

A mode-locked erbium-doped fiber ring laser that is easy to set up is proposed and experimentally demonstrated to generate a high-repetition-rate optical pulse train with an ultrashort pulse width. The laser combines a rational harmonic mode-locking technique and charcoal nanoparticles as saturable absorbers. Compared to a solely active mode-locking scheme, the scheme with charcoal nanoparticles can remove the supermodes and narrow the pulse width by a factor of 0.57 at a repetition rate of 20 GHz. Numerical simulation of the laser performance is also provided, which shows good agreement with the experimental results.

Simulation of octave spanning mid-infrared supercontinuum generation in dispersion-varying planar waveguides.

A dispersion-varying tapered planar waveguide is designed to generate supercontinuum efficiently in the mid-infrared region. The rib waveguide of lead-silicate glass on silica is 1.8 cm long, consisting of a segment with longitudinally increasing etch depth. The mechanism involves nonlinear soliton dynamics. The dispersion profile is shifted along the propagation distance, leading to continuous modification of the phase-matching condition for dispersive wave (DW) emission and enhancement of energy transfer efficiency between solitons and DWs. With low input pulse energy of 45 pJ, simulation demonstrates the generation of both broadband and flat near-octave spectrum spanning 1.3-2.5 µm at the -20 dB level.

Supercontinuum generation in dispersion-managed tapered-rib waveguide.

We have designed a tapered-rib waveguide and numerically studied the generation of supercontinuum using such waveguides. The Air-SF57 glass-SiO(2) waveguide is 3 cm long, with a varying etched depth to manage the total dispersion. Numerical simulations are conducted for input pulses at a wavelength of 1.55 µm with a width of 150 fs and peak power of 5 kW. The proposed waveguide geometry greatly broadens the output spectrum, extending from ∼1 to ∼6 µm, caused by the continuous modification of the phase-matching condition for the generated waves.

High speed all optical logic gates based on quantum dot semiconductor optical amplifiers.

A scheme to realize all-optical Boolean logic functions AND, XOR and NOT using semiconductor optical amplifiers with quantum-dot active layers is studied. nonlinear dynamics including carrier heating and spectral hole-burning are taken into account together with the rate equations scheme. Results show with QD excited state and wetting layer serving as dual-reservoir of carriers, as well as the ultra fast carrier relaxation of the QD device, this scheme is suitable for high speed Boolean logic operations. Logic operation can be carried out up to speed of 250 Gb/s.

Eighth-order rational harmonic mode-locked fiber laser with amplitude-equalized output operating at 80 Gbits/s.

We report the generation of an 80 Gbit/s pulse train by an eighth-order rational harmonic mode-locking technique. Equalized pulse-train amplitude is achieved by proper adjustment of the dc bias point and the 10 GHz modulation strength applied to the cavity-loss modulator. A numerical model is developed to simulate the properties of the generated 80 Gbit/s pulse train. The simulated results are well supported by the experimental measurements.

Measurement of gain tilt and its contribution to composite second-order distortion in the analog-digital transmission systems with Er/Yb fiber amplifiers.

Fiber-optic-based analog or digital community antenna television systems experience composite second-order (CSO) distortion caused by the interaction between the gain tilt of the doped fiber amplifier and the laser chirp due to modulation. The gain tilt for an analog-digital transmission system with a high-power erbium/ytterbium-codoped fiber amplifier has been experimentally measured and its contribution to the CSO distortion of the system is evaluated. The results are in good agreement when compared with the direct measurement of the CSO distortion of the transmission system with and without the amplifier. The dependence of the gain tilt on the modulation frequency and wavelength of the input light is also investigated.

Stabilization of simultaneous mode locked operation at two wavelengths.

We demonstrate simultaneous stabilized operation of a mode locked ring fiber laser at two wavelengths. At one of the wavelengths the mode locked operation is at 10 GHz and it is at 40 GHz at the second wavelength. The laser has an intracavity LiNbO3 modulator driven at 10 GHz. The 40 GHz pulses are obtained by rational harmonic mode locking. Pulses with widths in 5 to 8 ps range are obtained. Mode locking at 40 GHz for both wavelengths has also been demonstrated.

Clock recovery using cascaded LiNbO3 modulator.

In this paper, we demonstrate clock recovery from a patterned optical-time-division-multiplexed (OTDM) return-to-zero (RZ) data stream. A cascaded LiNbO3 Mach-Zehnder modulator is employed as an efficient optical-electrical mixer. A phase-locked-loop (PLL) is used to lock the cross-correlation component between the optical signal and a local oscillating signal. As a result, clock signal at 10GHz is extracted from the 160Gb/s optical TDM signal. The measured root-mean-square (RMS) timing jitter of the 10GHz clock signal is ~130fs.

Optical gain of single mode short Er/Yb doped fiber.

Optical gain and output power as a function of pump power has been calculated for short Er/Yb doped single mode fibers for various fiber parameters. The calculation shows that long fiber lengths provide both higher small signal gain and higher output power. Gain of 14 dB has been observed in a 30 mm long fiber at 400 mW of input pump power. The observed small signal gain is found to be linearly proportional to the length of the fiber with a slope of 0.44 dB/mm at 400 mW of pump power.

Quantitative assessment of flow velocity-estimation algorithms for optical Doppler tomography imaging.

We present a quantitative comparison of three categories of velocity estimation algorithms, including centroid techniques (the adaptive centroid technique and the weighted centroid technique), the sliding-window filtering technique, and correlation techniques (autocorrelation and cross correlation). We introduce, among these five algorithms, two new algorithms: weighted centroid and sliding-window filtering. Simulations and in vivo blood flow data are used to assess the velocity estimation accuracies of these algorithms. These comparisons demonstrate that the sliding-window filtering technique is superior to the other techniques in terms of velocity estimation accuracy and robustness to noise.

Suppression of self-pulsing behavior in erbium-doped fiber lasers with a semiconductor optical amplifier.

We experimentally demonstrate that the stability of cw and mode-locked erbium-doped fiber ring lasers can be improved significantly with a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) inside the cavity. The fast saturable gain of the SOA suppresses significantly the self-pulsing that is due to ion pairs in the erbium-doped fiber, which acts as a saturable absorber. A linear stabilization analysis of the laser system agrees with our experimental results.