Wavelength conversion and pulse reshaping through cascaded interactions in an MZI configuration

An optical wavelength converter based on second-order cascaded interactions in a waveguide is presented. The conversion mechanism relies on the combination of amplification and nonlinear dephasing of a signal field in the presence of a strong pump field at the phase-matching wavelength for second-harmonic generation. The considered scheme of the device is that of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The performance is numerically evaluated in the pulsed regime. A wide conversion bandwidth and high conversion efficiency is found. An operating regime can be found in which a significant reshaping of the output pulses, with respect to input pulses, can be observed.

[1]  David J. Hagan,et al.  χ(2) cascading phenomena and their applications to all-optical signal processing, mode-locking, pulse compression and solitons , 1996 .

[2]  Ilaria Cristiani,et al.  Wavelength shifting of optical pulses through cascaded second-order processes in a lithium–niobate channel waveguide , 1999 .

[3]  GianPiero Banfi,et al.  Optical frequency mixing through cascaded second‐order processes in β‐barium borate , 1993 .

[4]  Gijsbertus J.M. Krijnen,et al.  All‐optical integrated Mach–Zehnder switching due to cascaded nonlinearities , 1996 .

[5]  L. Qian,et al.  Large high-order nonlinear phase shifts produced by χ(2) cascaded processes , 2002 .

[6]  Numerical study of cascaded wavelength conversion in quadratic media , 2002 .

[7]  J. Aitchison,et al.  All-optical switching based on nondegenerate phase shifts from a cascaded second-order nonlinearity. , 1993, Optics letters.

[8]  M. Lawrence,et al.  A temperature-dependent dispersion equation for congruently grown lithium niobate , 1984 .

[9]  A Kobyakov,et al.  Nonlinear phase shift and all-optical switching in quasi-phase-matched quadratic media. , 1998, Optics letters.

[10]  Gaetano Assanto,et al.  Analysis of lithium niobate all-optical wavelength shifters for the third spectral window , 1999 .

[11]  I. Cristiani,et al.  WAVELENGTH CONVERSION OF AN INFRARED SIGNAL THROUGH CASCADED SECOND-ORDER NONLINEARITY IN A LITHIUM-NIOBATE CHANNEL WAVEGUIDE , 2000 .

[12]  W. Sohler,et al.  Efficient cascaded difference frequency conversion in periodically poled Ti:LiNbO3 waveguides using pulsed and cw pumping , 2001 .

[13]  M. Asobe,et al.  All-optical switching by use of cascading of phase-matched sum-frequency-generation and difference-frequency-generation processes in periodically poled LiNbO(3). , 1997, Optics letters.

[14]  Martin M. Fejer,et al.  1.5-μm-band wavelength conversion based on cascaded second-order nonlinearity in LiNbO 3 waveguides , 1999 .

[15]  Toshio Morioka,et al.  All-optical modulation and time-division-multiplexing of 100 Gbit/s signal using quasi-phase matched mixing in LiNbO/sub 3/ waveguides , 2000 .

[16]  D. Fortusini,et al.  Wavelength shifting and amplification of optical pulses through cascaded second-order processes in periodically poled lithium niobate , 1998 .

[17]  H. Ishizuki,et al.  Integrated QPM sum-frequency generation interferometer device for ultrafast optical switching , 2001, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[18]  Mingde Zhang,et al.  Theoretical studies for special states of cascaded quadratic nonlinear effects , 2001 .