Proposal for arbitrary-order temporal integration of ultrafast optical signals using a single uniform-period fiber Bragg grating

A simple and practical all-fiber design for implementing arbitrary-order temporal integration of ultrafast optical waveforms is proposed and numerically investigated. We demonstrate that an ultrafast photonics integrator of any desired integration order can be implemented using a uniform-period fiber Bragg grating (FBG) with a properly designed amplitude-only grating apodization profile. In particular, the grating coupling strength must vary according to the (N-1) power of the fiber distance for implementing an Nth-order photonics integrator (N=1,2,...). This approach requires the same level of practical difficulty for realizing any given integration order. The proposed integration devices operate over a limited time window, which is approximately fixed by the round-trip propagation time in the FBG. Ultrafast arbitrary-order all-optical integrators capable of accurate operation over nanosecond time windows can be implemented using readily feasible FBGs.