2R-regenerative all-optical switch based on a highly nonlinear holey fiber

We report the fabrication of a highly nonlinear holey fiber made from pure silica with an effective area of just ~2.8mu;m(2) at 1550 nm. We believe this to be the smallest effective area yet measured for a holey fiber at 1550 nm. We also report the operation of a 2R regenerative optical switch based on just 3.3 m of the fiber that is shown to have 30 times the nonlinear figure of merit of previous devices based on dispersion-shifted fiber.