An active involvement of optics in information processing depends on the existence of dynamically controllable all-optical buffers. There has been a steady interest in the development of such devices and in the investigation of the fundamental principles that could lead to their development. Unlike usual optical delay lines that rely upon the phase delay of the signal light, the new generation of the controllable optical buffers is based on group delays. Phase delay τph = Ln0/c depends on the refractive index of thematerial n0, length of the delay line L, and speed of light in the vacuum c. Group delay τg = d(ωLn0(ω)/c)/dω is built upon the dispersion of the material, i.e., upon the frequency (ω) dependence of the refractive index n0(ω).
An active involvement of optics in information processing depends on the existence of dynamically controllable all-optical buffers. There has been a steady interest in the development of such devices and in the investigation of the fundamental principles that could lead to their development. Unlike usual optical delay lines that rely upon the phase delay of the signal light, the new generation of the controllable optical buffers is based on group delays. Phase delay τph = Ln0/c depends on the refractive index of thematerial n0, length of the delay line L, and speed of light in the vacuum c. Group delay τg = d(ωLn0(ω)/c)/dω is built upon the dispersion of the material, i.e., upon the frequency (ω) dependence of the refractive index n0(ω).
As a potential enabling technology, slow light has captured much research interest over the past few years for achieving a continuously tunable optical delay line [1]. In principle, slow light is generated by tailoring an enhanced group-index resonance within a given nonlinear medium. This effective refractive index change is experienced by the data stream passing through and thus induces a controllable group delay onto the signal. Themain feature of a slow-light-based optical delay line is the capability for fine-grain temporal manipulation of optical pulses. This fine tunable delay element is envisioned to be useful for various high-bandwidth signal processing functions and applications.
This paper presents an analysis of optical buffers based on slow-light optical delay lines. The focus of this paper is on slow-light delay lines in which the group velocity is reduced using linear processes, including electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), population oscillations (POs), and microresonator-based photonic-crystal (PC) filters. We also consider slow-light delay lines in which the group velocity is reduced by an adiabatic process of bandwidth compression. A framework is developed for comparing these techniques and identifying fundamental physical limitations of linear slow-light technologies. It is shown that slow-light delay lines have limited capacity and delay-bandwidth product. In principle, the group velocity in slow-light delay lines can be made to approach zero. But very slow group velocity always comes at the cost of very low bandwidth or throughput. In many applications, miniaturization of the delay line is an important consideration. For all delay-line buffers, the minimum physical size of the buffer for a given number of buffered data bits is ultimately limited by the physical size of each stored bit. We show that in slow-light optical buffers, the minimum achievable size of 1 b is approximately equal to the wavelength of light in the buffer. We also compare the capabilities and limitations of a range of delay-line buffers, investigate the impact of waveguide losses on the buffer capacity, and look at the applicability of slow-light delay lines in a number of applications.
The control of the group velocity of optical signals has been widely demonstrated using various optical phenomena and different media. Slow and fast light is achieved in a controllable manner by modifying the refractive index dispersion through light induced modifications of the material or the structural properties of the medium. The potential for a continuous tuning of the phase or time delay of broadband microwave signals modulating the optical carrier opens previously unexplored horizons. The talk will review the recent advancements and the future directions of slow and fast light research with an emphasis on microwave-photonics applications.
Frontiers in Guided Wave Optics and Optoelectronics 84 absorption is much too high to render the group effect useful.An exciting breakthrough happened in the early nineties when it was shown that group velocities of few tens of meters per second were possible with nonlinear resonance interactions (Hau et al., 1999).Two important features of nonlinear resonances make this possible: substantially reduced absorption, or even amplification, of radiation at a resonance, and sharpness of such resonances; the sharper a resonance, the higher dn/dω and so the stronger the enhancement of group index, and hence the greater the pulse is delayed.Widely ranging applications for slow light have been proposed, of which those for telecommunication systems and devices (optical delay lines, optical buffers, optical equalizers and signal processors) are currently of most interest (Gauthier, 2005).The essential demand of such devices is compatibility with existing telecommunication systems, that is they must be of wide enough bandwidth (≥10 GHz) and able to be integrated seamlessly into such systems.Of the various nonlinear resonance mechanisms and media, which allow sufficiently long induced delays, stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering (SBS and SRS) in optical fiber are deemed to be among the best candidates.Currently SBS is the most actively investigated and many experimental and theoretical papers on pulse delaying via SBS in optical fiber have been published in the last few years, see the review paper (Thevenaz, 2008) and references therein.In this process the pulse to be delayed is a frequency down-shifted (Stokes) pulse.This is transmitted through an optical fiber through which continuous wave (CW) pump radiation is sent in the opposite direction to prime the delay process.It is supposed that the Stokes pulse is amplified by parametric coupling with the pump wave and a material (acoustic) wave in the medium (Kroll, 1965), and the amplification is characterised by a resonant-type gain profile.The dispersion of refractive index associated with this profile (which is similar to that in Fig. 1) can then be used to increase the group index for optical pulses at the Stokes frequency (Zeldovich, 1972).Along with obvious device compatibility, there are several other advantages of the SL via SBS approach for optical communications systems: slow-light resonance can be created at any wavelength by changing the pump wavelength; use of optical fibre allows for long interaction lengths and thus low powers for the pump radiation, the process runs at room temperature, it uses off the shelf telecom equipment, and SBS works in the entire transparency range of fibers and in all types of fiber.Currently a main obstacle to applications of this approach is the narrow SBS gain spectral bandwidth, (Thevenaz, 2008), which is typically ≈ 120-200 MHz in silica fiber in the spectral range of telecom optical radiation (~1.3-1.6 μm) (Agrawal, 2006).This chapter reviews our ongoing work on the physical mechanisms that give rise to pulse delay in SBS.In section 2 the theoretical background of the SBS phenomenon is given and the main working equations describing this nonlinear interaction are presented.In section 3 ways by which the SBS spectral bandwidth may be increased are addressed.Waveguide induced spectral broadening of SBS in optical fibre is considered as a means of increasing the bandwidth to the multi-GHz range.An alternative way widely discussed in the literature, (Thevenaz, 2008), is based on spectral broadening of the pump radiation.However it is shown through analytic analysis of the SBS equations converted to the frequency domain that pump radiation broadening by any reasonable amount has only a negligible effect on increasing the SBS bandwidth.Importantly in this section we show that, irrespective of the nature of the broadening considered, the SBS gain bandwidth remains www.intechopen.
Fast or slow light propagation means that the group velocity of a quasi-monochromatic light pulse propagating in a resonant medium can be significantly faster or slower than the light speed in a vacuum. Since the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, studies on this subject have attracted a great deal of interest. Remarkable progress has been achieved, based on various nonlinear optical interactions in resonant media. The fundamental research on this subject can enrich our understanding of special relativity and causality in physics. On the other hand, those mechanisms and techniques developed for fast and slow light propagation have provided the potential for many future applications, such as optical buffers and variable delay lines for optical networks, optical computing, optical telecommunications, optical data storage, and signal processing.
One of the key issues when dealing with slow light is the inevitable effect of dispersion, the result of which is to broaden a pulse upon propagation. Moreover, the dispersion tends to increase when the group velocity, the speed at which the pulse propagates, decreases. To see this, we note that if we write the group velocity vg ≡ c/ng, where ng is the group index, then we find that ng = n+ωdn/dω. Since for the materials we are interested in, the refractive index does not vary strongly in magnitude, and slow light is obtained when the derivative dn/dω is large and positive. However, as the variations in the magnitude of n itself are limited, the large derivative can only be maintained over a narrow bandwidth ∝ (dn/dω)−1. Therefore, a large delay implies a narrow bandwidth, and hence a limited pulse width. Here we discuss how to avoid this limit by using nonlinear effects in the form of gap solitons. Though this argument is quite simple, it can be made rigorous using the Kramers-Kronig relations. In this way it can be shown that the achievable delay in a linear, two-port device is subject to a limitation of the product of the delay and the bandwidth (Lenz et al., 2001).