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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Cavity build-up and transient fluctuations in optical-fibre-loop memories

M. Calzavara

Published Jan 1, 1994• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The use of fibre-loop memories is being experimented for solving routing contention of data cells in photonic high bit rate ATM switching fabrics.1 The simplest fiber-loop memory looks like a ring laser consisting of a semiconductor laser amplifier (SOA), a span of fibre introducing a delay of the order of an ATM cell duration (10–6-sec) and a 50/50 directional coupler (Fig. 1). To compensate for the power tapping at the directional coupler while avoiding the onset of laser oscillations, the SOA is biased above the ring laser threshold only for a limited number of round trips, then the bias current is switched off. The memory is thus driven through the transition from a state ruled by spontaneous emission toward a state above lasing threshold, in which stimulated emission is predominant. Far enough from the beginning of the transition the intensity fluctuations display a maximum.2,3 The transition is completed after a time depending on the final state intensity.2 These features significantly affect the maximum storage time and noise behavior of the memory.

DOI
10.1364/cleo_europe.1994.cwj2

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The use of fibre-loop memories is being experimented for solving routing contention of data cells in photonic high bit rate ATM switching fabrics.1 The simplest fiber-loop memory looks like a ring laser consisting of a semiconductor laser amplifier (SOA), a span of fibre introducing a delay of the order of an ATM cell duration (10–6-sec) and a 50/50 directional coupler (Fig. 1). To compensate for the power tapping at the directional coupler while avoiding the onset of laser oscillations, the SOA is biased above the ring laser threshold only for a limited number of round trips, then the bias current is switched off. The memory is thus driven through the transition from a state ruled by spontaneous emission toward a state above lasing threshold, in which stimulated emission is predominant. Far enough from the beginning of the transition the intensity fluctuations display a maximum.2,3 The transition is completed after a time depending on the final state intensity.2 These features significantly affect the maximum storage time and noise behavior of the memory.
Optical storage devices are essential elements of future ultra-high bit-rate fiber communications systems in which they will find applications to various vital functions. Pulse pattern storage has been demonstrated in various fiber loop devices [1] that involve pulse control techniques in order to provide timing stability of the bit patterns. Most of these stabilization techniques are based on electrooptic modulation which limits the bit rates to a tenth of Gb/s. Moreover, erasing the data in these storage fiber loops requires switching off the system elect rooptically. Individual bit addressing is therefore impossible, which considerably restricts the functionality of the devices. We investigate here the possibility of developing a new type of all-optical fiber loop storage device. This device consists of a simple nonlinear passive fiber ring resonator synchronously and coherently pumped by a cw mode-locked train of ultrashort pulses. It is well known that this system exhibits rich nonlinear dynamics, in particular, optical bistability which is a feature naturally suited for applications to optical storage. However, erasing the data in an optical bistable element requires to switch off the holding beam and is therefore not practical. Recently, Haelterman et al. [2] have studied the polarization dynamics of nonlinear dispersive ring cavities with cw pump and have shown that these devices exhibit a polarization symmetry breaking characterized by a pitchfork bifurcation. This feature can be applied to the development of a set-reset flip-flop all-optical fiber loop pulsed memory. This work aims at presenting the results of a preliminary investigation of such a storage device.
Semiconductor ring lasers are semiconductor lasers where the laser cavity consists of a ring-shaped waveguide. SRLs are highly integrable and scalable, making them ideal candidates for key components in photonic integrated circuits. SRLs can generate light in two counterpropagating directions between which bistability has been demonstrated. Hence, information can be coded into the emission direction. This bistable operation allows SRLs to be used in systems for all-optical switching and as all-optical memories. For the demonstration of fast optical flip-flop operation, Hill et al. [Nature 432, 206 (2004)] fabricated two SRLs coupled by a single waveguide, rather than a solitary SRL. Nevertheless, the literature shows that a single SRL can also function perfectly as an all-optical memory. In our recent paper [W. Coomans et al., Phys. Rev. A 88, 033813, (2013)], we have raised the question whether coupling two SRLs to realize a single optical memory has any advantage over using a solitary SRL, taking into account the obvious disadvantage of a doubled footprint and power consumption. To provide the answer, we have presented in that paper a numerical study of the dynamical behavior of semiconductor ring lasers coupled by a single bus waveguide, both when weakly coupled and when strongly coupled. We have provided a detailed analysis of the multistable landscape in the coupled system, analyzed the stability of all solutions and related the internal dynamics in the individual lasers to the field effectively measured at the output of the waveguide. We have shown which coupling phases generally promote instabilities and therefore need to be avoided in the design. Regarding all-optical memory operation, we have demonstrated that there is no real advantage for bistable memory operation compared to using a solitary SRL. An increased power suppression ratio has been found to be mainly due to the destructive interference of the SRL fields at the low power port. Also, multistability between several modal configurations has been shown to remain unavoidable.
We present an experimental demonstration of an all optical memory consisting of a single semiconductor optical amplifier as the active medium based on wave mixing. The circuit is a fiber ring consisting of a semiconductor amplifier, a bi-directional 2x2 fiber coupler, an isolator, a polarization controller, and a Faraday mirror. The output is observed on the spectrum analyzer, which consists of the peak wavelength of the SOA plus an additional signal generated through wave mixing, which is tunable within the band gap of the SOA. We shall demonstrate two modes of operation of the device, which will consist of a flip flop switch between three states, as well as a single data storage memory. The stable states consist of two modes, where the mode amplitude represents the state. Mode 1 corresponds to 1500 nanometers and mode 2 corresponds to 1530 nanometers. A contrast ratio between an “on” and “off” state is measured for each mode and the mode of operation is based on the polarization. We shall present the states for the circuit, the effect of drive current on the system, the effect of the SOA structure, wave mixing effects, and how to operate the device for both logic operation and data storage.
We demonstrate the storage and on-demand retrieval of single-photon-level telecom pulses in a fiber cavity. The cavity is formed by fiber Bragg gratings at either end of a single-mode fiber. Photons are mapped into and out of the cavity using quantum frequency conversion driven by intense control pulses. In a first spliced-fiber cavity, we demonstrate storage up to $0.55\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$ (11 cavity round trips), with 11.311.3%\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.111.3% total memory efficiency and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 12.8 after one round trip. In a second, monolithic cavity, we increase this lifetime to $1.75\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{s}$ (35 round trips) with a memory efficiency of 12.712.7%\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.2%12.7 (SNR of $7.0\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}0.2$) after one round trip. Fiber-based cavities for quantum storage at telecom wavelengths offer a promising route to synchronizing spontaneous-photon-generation events and building scalable quantum networks.