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Applied Physics Letters

All-optical signal gating using ytterbium-doped fiber and a pair of thermally expanded core fibers

Linh Viet Nguyen, Youngjoo Chung

Published Oct 19, 2009• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report all-optical signal gating using ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) and a pair of thermally expanded core fibers (TECFs). Splicing the YDF with two TECFs at their expanded-core ends, we obtained an interference pattern in the transmission spectrum of the device. When pumped by a laser diode at 980 nm, the interference fringes shift to longer wavelength due mainly to the resonantly enhanced nonlinearity of the YDF. Consequently, signals within the interference pattern can be gated or blocked all optically. Full gating of cw signals at 1564.21 and 1564.54 nm were obtained using a pump power of about 38.44 mW.

DOI
10.1063/1.3233971

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We report all-optical signal gating using ytterbium-doped fiber (YDF) and a pair of thermally expanded core fibers (TECFs). Splicing the YDF with two TECFs at their expanded-core ends, we obtained an interference pattern in the transmission spectrum of the device. When pumped by a laser diode at 980 nm, the interference fringes shift to longer wavelength due mainly to the resonantly enhanced nonlinearity of the YDF. Consequently, signals within the interference pattern can be gated or blocked all optically. Full gating of cw signals at 1564.21 and 1564.54 nm were obtained using a pump power of about 38.44 mW.
A resonance-enhanced nonlinearity is used to demonstrate a digital switching response in a two-mode fiber interferometer constructed from ytterbium(III)-doped optical fiber. The fiber used was single-mode at the pump wavelength (980 nm) and two-moded at the signal wavelength (514 nm). Interferometer-based optical switches are generally sensitive to fluctuations in pump power, because of the sinusoidal dependence of the output state on pump power. However by allowing the doped fiber to lase, thus clamping the phase shift, this sensitivity can be eliminated to yield a bi-stable, digital switching response. In our interferometer configuration, a laser cavity was defined in the ytterbium-doped fiber by a matched pair of Bragg gratings, and the magnitude of the clamped phase shift was controlled by stretching one of the gratings to adjust the laser threshold. Digital switching of a 514 nm signal with 11 dB isolation and a power-length product of 1.3 mW.m was demonstrated. The relaxation time of the switch was determined by the ytterbium(III) excited state lifetime, while the rise time could be reduced by increasing the pump power without compromising the isolation. The clamping technique demonstrated in this paper should be applicable to any optical switch incorporating a gain medium.
The resonant nonlinearity observed in rare-earth doped fiber is of interest for all-optical switching due to the very low pump powers needed to achieve complete switching. Large nonlinear effects have been observed previously in both erbium and neodymium doped fibers, however, these large effects cannot be explained by taking into account the change in absorption of local transitions alone. Two mechanisms have been suggested to account for these anomalously large index changes, namely thermally induced effects and far from resonance population dependent effects. In this work, an ytterbium doped twin-core fiber is used to investigate the tow possible mechanisms, and by allowing the doped fiber to lase and observing the clamping of the induced phase change, it is demonstrated that the effect is population dependent in nature. The observed wavelength response of the effect shows an increase in induced phase towards shorter wavelengths, which suggests that the effect is due principally to changes in strong absorptions in the UV. This far-from-resonance effect has been used to demonstrate large phase changes at the preferred telecommunications windows of 1300nm and 1550nm.
We theoretically investigate the quantum defect between pump and signal photons in ytterbium-doped fiber lasers and amplifiers, and find that this can be as low as 0.6%. We find that the lowest quantum defects can be achieved with a low area ratio between the pump and signal waveguide of a double-clad fiber, and with high-brightness pumping in the core being an ultimate approach. The change in achievable quantum defect is small over a relatively large range of pump wavelengths, but it is still necessary to optimize the wavelengths and match the fiber length to reach the smallest quantum defect.