Optics Express
Large tunable fractional delay of slow light pulse and its application to fast optical correlator
Norihiro Ishikura, Toshihiko Baba, Eiichi Kuramochi, Masaya Notomi
Abstract
The slow light device based on photonic crystal coupled waveguide was fabricated, and a tunable delay of 72 ps was obtained for 2-ps-wide slow light pulses by local heating, which corresponds to a tunable fractional delay of 36. This value was further enhanced to 110 by compressing the output pulses through self-phase modulation and dispersion compensation in external fibers. We applied this device to optical correlator as a delay scanner, where the fractional delay determines the resolution of the delay scanning. Using this correlator, we successfully observed sub-picosecond pulses at a scan frequency up to 2 kHz, which is 100 times faster than that of mechanical scanners in conventional correlators.