Ultrafast all optical switching using pulse trapping in birefringent fibers.

An ultrafast all-optical switching using pulse trapping by orthogonally polarized soliton pulse in birefringent fiber is investigated both experimentally and numerically. The signal pulse, which is polarized along the fast axis, is trapped by the control soliton pulse along the slow axis; they subsequently copropagate along the fiber. Their wavelengths are red-shifted by the soliton self-frequency shift. The trapped pulse is shaped as a sech2 ultrashort pulse. It is also amplified by the Raman gain of the control pulse. Temporal response of the pulse trapping is estimated as 250 fs for 150 fs signal pulses. Ultrafast all-optical switching is demonstrated for the 0.84 THz pulse train.