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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Optical switching in erbium-doped fibers

P. L. Chu, Yan Xue, Bin Wu

Published May 11, 1993• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Theoretical and experimental investigations of the nonlinear refractive index in an erbium- doped fiber are reported. We also show that an optical switch based on twin-core erbium- doped fiber can be constructed and operated at low input optical power, in the order of 1 or 2 mW. The transient response of this fiber also is examined. The switching speed can be improved by using a signal power at a wavelength close to the resonant wavelength between the excited state and the ground state.

DOI
10.1117/12.144156

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Theoretical and experimental investigations of the nonlinear refractive index in an erbium- doped fiber are reported. We also show that an optical switch based on twin-core erbium- doped fiber can be constructed and operated at low input optical power, in the order of 1 or 2 mW. The transient response of this fiber also is examined. The switching speed can be improved by using a signal power at a wavelength close to the resonant wavelength between the excited state and the ground state.
We report low loss, low pump power, optical-optical switches in rare-earth-doped fibers based on the third-order optical nonlinearity resonantly enhanced by the dopant. In a 0.95-m Er- doped two-mode fiber switch pumped with a 1.48-micrometers diode laser, the absorbed pump power required for switching a 906-nm signal was 8 mW, for a signal loss of only 0.25 dB. This is an enhancement by a factor of 6200 in power-length product over undoped silica. The phase shift was found to be due in part to a non-resonant contribution, thought to arise from a strong UV-VUV transition, and in part to a resonant term from the 980-nm transition. In a 0.98-m Nd-doped, elliptical-core, two-mode fiber switch, switching of a 632.8-nm signal was achieved with only 6.6 mW of absorbed power at 900 nm. The dynamic response of the switch was found to have two components, a slow component equal to the metastable level lifetime (approximately equals 380 microsecond(s) ) and a fast component (approximately equals 2 microsecond(s) ). The latter is believed to arise from rapid cross-relaxation between paired ions, a mechanism which shows promises for low- power, microsecond switching in fibers.
Erbium-doped optical fibre (EDOF) is an important platform to study the intensity-dependent nonlinear propagation and nonlinear polarisation rotation, optical switching and four-wave mixing. The source thesis contains both theoretical and computational work. In this paper the work is presented in the format of a research paper that is published by the University Grants Commission. The nonlinear coefficient is expressed in terms of the nonlinear refractive-index coefficient, the operating wavelength and the effective mode area, and the resulting nonlinear phase response is investigated. The consideration of the passive attenuation and the active gain in the theoretical model, and the computational analysis carried out on the basis of MATLAB are discussed. The nonlinear coefficient varies from 1.758 to 1.471 W−1 km−1 over the wavelength range 1480-1630 nm, while at 1550 nm it varies from 2.189 to 1.368 W−1 km−1 for effective mode area increasing from 50 to 80 µm2. The nonlinear phase shift goes up to 0.160 rad at 100 mW, compared to 0.016 rad at 10 mW. For the same input-power range, the nonlinear polarisation rotation increases from 2.4° to 24.0°. The optical-switching analysis shows a transmission of 90% and an extinction ratio of 9.54 dB at 100 mW. Four-wave-mixing analysis shows that the relative FWM response increases from 0.10 to 1.00 when the input power is increased from 10 to 100 mW and decreases from 0.90 to 0.15 when the assumed chromatic-dispersion value is changed from -20 to +15 ps/nm/km. The results show the inter-related roles of nonlinear coefficient, optical power, wavelength, polarisation evolution and chromatic dispersion in erbium-doped fibre systems. Erbium-doped fibre, nonlinear coefficient, Kerr nonlinearity, nonlinear polarisation rotation, optical switching, four-wave mixing, chromatic dispersion.
We present a theory that enables us to account for the pump-induced change of refractive index in a rare-earth-doped fiber. Experimental results carried out on an erbium-doped fiber with cw pump and cw signal operation confirm the accuracy of this theory at the steady state. Both theoretical and experimental results show that significant index changes can be obtained for the order of 1–2 mW of cw optical pump or signal power. In addition we studied the transient dynamics of the resonance-enhanced refractive index in a wide range of pulse widths from millisecond to tens of femtoseconds. The result shows that a fast response of refractive-index changes is achievable since the effects of spontaneous emission and nonradiative decay are negligible in the short-pulse case.