40-GHz pulse-train generation at 1.5 mum with a chirped fiber grating as a frequency multiplier

Pulse-train multiplication based on the temporal Talbot effect in a linearly chirped fiber Bragg grating has been experimentally demonstrated. A 40-GHz repetition-rate, nearly transform-limited 10-ps duration optical pulse train at 1.533 mum has been obtained from a 2.5-GHz mode-locked Er- Yb:glass laser by use of a 100-cm-long linearly chirped apodized fiber grating.     

Synchronized clock multiplication through optical subharmonic injection locking of an optoelectronic oscillator

We propose a remote synchronization scheme based on optoelectronic oscillators (OEO) and external modulators. Synchronized clock multiplication is demonstrated by using optical subharmonic injection locking technique. A 10-GHz slave OEO was successfully synchronized by 2.5-GHz/Gbps injecting optical clock pulse train, return-to-zero (RZ) signal and non-return-to-zero (NRZ) signal, respectively. The synchronization scheme is advantageous since it does not require strong nonlinearity presented in the master signal, and is capable of generating electrical and optical clock with small add-on phase noise.     

Optical clock repetition-rate multiplier for high-speed digital optical logic circuits

Repetition-rate multiplication has been shown by use of a fiber ring oscillator with a semiconductor optical amplifier as the gain medium and by use of fast saturation and recovery of the amplifier from an external optical pulse train. Repetition-frequency multiplication up to 6 times and up to 34.68-GHz frequency have been achieved.     

4x repetition-rate multiplication and Raman compression of pulses in the same optical fiber

A 21.7-km nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber was used to obtain 4x multiplication of the repetition rate of a 20-GHz train of 4.2-ps optical pulses through the temporal Talbot effect. Raman compression in the same fiber shortened and developed the pulses into 2.0-ps solitons and resulted in a lower duty cycle. It is shown that the linear Talbot effect and nonlinear Raman compression occurred in different sections of the fiber, the lengths of which could be varied through adjustments in the input pulse power.     

Synchronization of Fourier-Synthesized Optical Pulses to a Mode-Locked Optical Clock

A Fourier-synthesized 40-GHz optical pulse train was successfully synchronized to an 8-GHz optical clock generated from a mode-locked fiber ring laser. The measured timing jitter of the synchronization was 0.43 ps.     

Ultrashort optical pulse monitoring using asynchronous optical sampling technique in highly nonlinear fiber

An asynchronous optical sampling scheme based on four-wave mixing （FWM） in highly nonlinear fiber （HNLF） is experimentally demonstrated. Based on this scheme, 10-GHz input pulse train with 1.8-ps pulse width is successfully sampled in 100-m HNLF. A single pulse at 10 GHz with 2.3-ps pulse width is rebuilt by using a 50-MHz frequency tunable free-running fiber laser as the sampling pulse source （SPS）. 40-GHz pulse train is used as the input signal. The rebuilt waveforms, together with the low-jitter eye diagram, are also presented.     

20-GHz optical pulse source based on cascaded electroabsorption modulators

A high-quality low-timing-jitter 20-GHz optical pulse train is generated by using two cascaded sinusoidally driven electroabsorption modulators (EAMs) at very low bias voltage of -0.8 V in conjunction with a tunable distributed feedback (DFB) semiconductor laser. An approximate transform-limited optical pulse,with the pulse width less than 7 ps, the spectral width of 0.3 nm, and the side-mode suppression ratio (SMSR) above 20 dB, is obtained by tuning the optical delay line.     

Femtosecond synchronization of radio frequency signals with optical pulse trains

A synchronization scheme for extraction of low-jitter rf signals from optical pulse trains, which is robust against photodetector nonlinearities, is described. The scheme is based on a transfer of timing information into an intensity imbalance of the two output beams from a Sagnac loop. Sub-100-fs timing jitter between the extracted 2-GHz rf signal and the 100-MHz optical pulse train from a mode-locked Ti:sapphire laser is demonstrated.     

Generation of a 160-GHz transform-limited pedestal-free pulse train through multiwave mixing compression of a dual-frequency beat signal

We report the experimental generation of a 160-GHz picosecond pulse train at 1550 nm, using multiple four-wave mixing temporal compression of an initial dual-frequency beat signal in the anomalous-dispersion regime of a nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber. Complete intensity and phase characterizations of the pulse train were carried out by means of a frequency-resolved optical gating technique, showing that 1.27-ps transform-limited pedestal-free Gaussian pulses were generated.     

Demonstration of an 8×10-Gb/s OTDM system

An 8×10 Gb/s optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) system was demonstrated with an electroabsorption modulator (EAM) based short pulse generator followed by a two-stage nonlinear compression scheme which generated stable 10-GHz, 2-ps full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) pulse train, an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO) that extracted 10-GHz clock with a timing jitter of 300 fs from 80-Gb/s OTDM signal and a self cascaded EAM which produced a switching window of about 10 ps. A back-to-back error free demultiplexing experiment with a power penalty of 3.25 dB was carried out to verify the system performance.     

Demonstration of a 16×10-Gb/s OTDM system

A 16×10-Gb/s optical time-division-multiplexing (OTDM) system was demonstrated experimentally with a well-designed ultrashort pulse source based on an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) and nonlinear fiber compressor. The obtained 10-GHz stable and pedestal-free pulse train has 2-ps width, high extinction ratio, and low timing jitter. An ultrafast demultiplexer based on a nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) including a commercially available highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) is employed to demultiplex data signal from 160 to 10 Gb/s. A back-to-back error-free demultiplexing experiment is carried out to verify the system performance.     

A semiconductor-based, frequency-stabilized mode-locked laser using a phase modulator and an intracavity etalon

We report a frequency-stabilized semiconductor-based mode-locked laser that uses a phase modulator and an intracavity Fabry-Perot etalon for both active mode-locking and optical frequency stabilization. A twofold multiplication of the repetition frequency of the laser is inherently obtained in the process. The residual timing jitter of the mode-locked pulse train is 13 fs (1 Hz to 100 MHz), measured after regenerative frequency division of the photodetected pulse train.     

Ultrastable cesium atomic clock with a 9.1926-GHz regeneratively mode-locked fiber laser

We describe an ultrastable cesium (Cs) atomic clock with a 9.1926-GHz regeneratively mode-locked fiber laser obtained by use of an optically pumped Cs beam tube. By adopting a 1-m-long Cs beam tube with a linewidth of 110 Hz, we have successfully obtained frequency stabilities of 4.8 x 10(-12) for tau = 1 s and 6.3 x 10(-13) for tau = 50 s for a 9.1926-GHz microwave output signal. This Cs atomic clock can generate an optical pulse train with the same stability as that of the obtained microwave, which allows us to deliver a frequency standard optical signal throughout the world by means of optical fiber networks.     

Repetition-rate multiplication using a single all-pass optical cavity

We demonstrate a simple lossless method for the implementation of repetition-rate multiplication of a periodic pulse train. As it is showed, a single all-pass optical cavity (APOC) can increase the repetition rate of the output pulse train by factors of 2, 3, and 4. Two different APOC implementations, based on a Gires-Tournois interferometer and an all-pass ring resonator, are proposed and numerically demonstrated.     

Generation of 10-GHz duty-cycle tunable square optical pulse in an SOA-based mode-locked fiber laser

We demonstrate the generation of 10-GHz optical square pulses by injecting a picosecond pulse train into an SOA-based mode-locked fiber laser. The novel scheme exploits nonlinear effects and gain saturation phenomenon in the semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA). This technique uses gain-compression dynamics between the input pulses and the generated ones in gain-saturated SOA to form square pulses. The center wavelength of the generated optical square pulse can be tuned from 1530 to 1570 nm by adjusting the center wavelength of the optical band pass filter (OBPF) in the SOA-based mode-locked fiber ring laser. The duty cycle of the output pulse can be tuned from 12.7 to 88.4%, which strongly depends on the input power and intra-cavity power.     

Generation and stabilization of ultrafast optical pulse trains with monolithic mode-locked laser diodes

In this paper, we report on the generation and the stabilization of ultrafast optical pulse trains exceeding 100 GHz from monolithic mode-locked laser diodes (MLLDs) combined with some new techniques such as subharmonic synchronous mode-locking (SSML) and repetition-frequency multiplication (RFM) method. Key subjects to increase the pulse repetition frequencies of the MLLDs such as fast absorption recovery and harmonic mode-locking operation are discussed. 500 GHz optical pulse generation from a short-cavity, graded-index separated confinement heterostructure MLLD and THz-rate pulse generation by harmonic mode-locking are reported. We also demonstrate the stabilization of a 160 GHz MLLD by the SSML with subharmonic-frequency optical pulse injection and reveal that the SSML is very promising as a stabilization technique of the ultrafast MLLD beyond the limitations by the electronic device speed. A method to accurately measure the timing jitter of such ultrafast optical pulse train, all-optical down converting using a nonlinear optical device, is also presented. We also mention another choice for ultrafast optical pulse generation using the MLLD combined with a dispersive medium such as an optical fiber. We demonstrate here the generations of stable 84–256 GHz optical pulse trains by the RFM method of the MLLD stabilized by the SSML.     

Generation of 20-GHz picosecond pulse trains in the normal and anomalous dispersion regimes of optical fibers

In this paper, we numerically and experimentally study two methods to generate 20-GHz pulse trains at 1550 nm from a dual-frequency beat-signal. The first method is based on the multiple four-wave mixing temporal compression occurring in the anomalous dispersion regime of a standard optical fiber (SMF). In the second original method, the initial sinusoidal signal is first converted into a parabolic pulses train through nonlinear propagation in a normally dispersive fiber. A subsequent linear compression in an anomalous dispersive fiber leads to well-separated picosecond pulses.     

All-optical frequency multiplication/recovery based on a semiconductor optical amplifier ring cavity

A novel scheme for all-optical frequency multiplication/recovery based on a semiconductor optical amplifier ring cavity is proposed and investigated numerically. The results show, for a 2.5 GHz driving pulse train, it can be generated 5-25 GHz repetition rate pulse trains with low clock amplitude jitter, polarization independence and high peak power. Furthermore, the extraction of the clock signal from a pseudorandom bit sequence signal can be realized based on the proposed scheme.     

Cesium optical atomic clock: an optical pulse that tells the time

We propose a new cesium (Cs) atomic clock whose microwave source is a 9.1926-GHz harmonically and regeneratively mode-locked erbium fiber laser rather than a quartz oscillator and a multiplexer. The repetition rate of the laser is directly locked to the Cs resonance, and the frequency stability evaluated by the Allan variance is 7.1 x 10(-12) for tau = 1 s. This new atomic clock provides not only a precise 1-s time standard after demultiplexing but also an optical pulse train with the same stability, which means that the ultrastable clock signal can be delivered throughout the world by means of optical fiber networks.     

40-gHz, 100-fs stimulated-Brillouin-scattering-free pulse generation by combining a mode-locked laser diode and a dispersion-decreasing fiber

A 40-GHz, 100-fs pulse train was successfully generated by soliton compression of a mode-locked laser diode (MLLD) pulse with a dispersion-decreasing fiber. The MLLD had a longitudinal mode linewidth as broad as 60 MHz, which made it possible to suppress stimulated Brillouin scattering and achieve stable, ultrahigh-speed pulse compression without applying external frequency modulation.