Optical solitons switching in asymmetric dual-core nonlinear fiber couplers

With study on the switching characteristics in a asymmetric dual-core nonlinear fiber coupler, it is found the switch efficiencies when the dispersion values of two fibers have opposite signs are much higher than those when they have same signs. Meanwhile, when the dispersion values of two fibers have same signs, the switch efficiencies become much higher if the dispersion value of one core is decreased. In addition, the switch threshold power becomes lower than the one with the same sign if the nonlinearity coefficient of two fibers is opposite. The result shows that asymmetric coupler has much higher switch efficiencies and lower switch threshold power than symmetric coupler.