Shaping Light in Nonlinear Optical Fibers (eBook)

Sonia Boscolo, Christophe Finot (Herausgeber)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017
John Wiley & Sons (Verlag)
978-1-119-08815-8 (ISBN)

Infos

This book is a contemporary overview of selected topics in fiber optics. It focuses on the latest research results on light wave manipulation using nonlinear optical fibers, with the aim of capturing some of the most innovative developments on this topic. The book's scope covers both fundamentals and applications from both theoretical and experimental perspectives, with topics including linear and nonlinear effects, pulse propagation phenomena and pulse shaping, solitons and rogue waves, novel optical fibers, supercontinuum generation, polarization management, optical signal processing, fiber lasers, optical wave turbulence, light propagation in disordered fiber media, and slow and fast light. With contributions from leading-edge scientists in the field of nonlinear photonics and fiber optics, they offer an overview of the latest advances in their own research area.  The listing of recent research papers at the end of each chapter is useful for researchers using the book as a reference. As the book addresses fundamental and practical photonics problems, it will also be of interest to, and benefit, broader academic communities, including areas such as nonlinear science, applied mathematics and physics, and optical engineering. It offers the reader a wide and critical overview of the state-of-the-art within this practical - as well as fundamentally important and interesting - area of modern science, providing a useful reference which will encourage further research and advances in the field.

Edited by
Sonia Boscolo, Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, Aston University, Birmingham, UK

Christophe Finot, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne, CNRS-Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France

Textauszug

Preface

The twentieth century was characterized by a tremendous growth in our capability to develop ever more sophisticated electronic devices, which have fundamentally transformed the way that society functions. We now stand on the threshold of a similar revolution due to developments in photonics, which seeks to exploit the photon in the same way that electronics is ultimately concerned with controlling the electron. Photonics plays a vital role in our daily lives, and is an imperative cross-cutting discipline of science in the twenty-first century. This effectively interdisciplinary field, at the interface of physics, material science, and engineering, is very strongly linked to the field of nonlinear science. Though nonlinear physics has a rather long history, beginning with the works of Newton and Huygens, the science and technologies of the nineteenth and most of the twentieth century have been dominated by linear mathematical models and linear physical phenomena. Over the last few decades, there has been growing recognition of physical systems in which nonlinearity introduces a rich variety of fundamentally new properties that can never be observed in linear models or implemented in linear devices. From a practical standpoint, nonlinearity adds to the difficulty of understanding and predicting the system properties, and may therefore be regarded as a spurious effect that should be avoided. However, with suitable design and control, it is possible to master and exploit nonlinear physical interactions and processes to yield tremendous benefits. Accordingly, the understanding and mastering of nonlinear optical systems have the potential to enable a new generation of engineering concepts, as well as new experimental testbeds to investigate complex nonlinear dynamics of fundamental interest, such as the formation of rogue waves, wave turbulence, and propagation in disordered media.

Nonlinear fiber optics has revolutionized photonics, providing exquisite temporal and spectral control of optical signals for telecommunications, spectroscopy, microscopy, material processing, and many other important areas of applications, as well as a myriad of specialized scientific research tools. The third-order optical nonlinearity in silica-based single-mode fibers is responsible for a wide range of phenomena, such as third-harmonic generation, nonlinear refraction (Kerr nonlinearity), and stimulated Raman and Brillouin scattering. Although the optical nonlinearity of silica is much lower than that exhibited by crystals of such materials as lithium niobate or beta barium borate, silica fibers can provide a comparatively enormous interaction length and tight confinement, which offer the long-recognized possibility of using optical fibers for nonlinear interactions. Several approaches to making highly nonlinear fibers have been used with varying success. Silica fiber manufacture is a mature technology, so the best results for many applications have been achieved by making silica fibers with a small mode area. Other nonlinear fibers have been made with materials having a much higher nonlinearity, such as bismuth oxide, chalcogenides, and silica doped with lead or other nonlinear material. Photonic crystal fibers of various designs and materials are also used.

For more than three decades, optical fibers have been recognized as a versatile testbed for the investigation of a large variety of nonlinear concepts. The unique dispersive and nonlinear properties of optical fibers lead to various scenarios of the evolution of short pulses propagating in the fiber, which result in particular changes of the pulse temporal shape, spectrum, and phase profile. A well-known and fascinating example is the formation of optical solitons in the anomalous dispersion regime of a fiber. Solitons have been extensively studied in many and diverse branches of physics such as optics, plasmas, condensed matter physics, fluid mechanics, particle physics, and even astrophysics. Interestingly, over the past two decades, the field of solitons and related nonlinear phenomena has been substantially advanced and enriched by research and discoveries in nonlinear optics. Temporal optical solitons, as realized in fiber-optic systems, have revolutionized the field of optical communications in that they can be used as the information carrying “bits” in fibers. Temporal solitons play an important role in ultrashort pulse lasers as well. Moreover, recent analogies between optical supercontinuum generation and the occurrence of oceanic rogue waves have led to the first experimental demonstration of a peculiar hydrodynamic solution that was analytically predicted decades ago: the Peregrine soliton, later followed by the experimental observation of its counterpart in deep water hydrodynamics. The fundamental interest in optical fiber systems is not limited to pulse propagation in the anomalous group-velocity dispersion region. Indeed, recent developments in nonlinear optics have brought to the fore of intensive research an interesting class of pulses with a parabolic intensity profile and a linear instantaneous frequency shift or chirp, which propagate in optical fibers with normal group-velocity dispersion in a self-similar manner. Parabolic similaritons have opened up new avenues of fundamental and applied research in nonlinear science. The success of self-similarity analysis in nonlinear fiber optics is motivating more general studies into the dynamics of guided wave propagation as well as related self-similar evolution in physical systems such as Bose-Einstein condensates. In parallel, the unique properties of parabolic similaritons have stimulated numerous applications ranging from high-power ultrashort pulse generation to highly coherent supercontinuum sources and optical nonlinear processing of telecommunication signals.

Modern state-of-the-art communication systems are nonlinear. The only question that remains is how to respond to that fact. One possibility is simply to regard the nonlinearity as performance degradation and try to minimize its impact. A more intriguing question is whether the nonlinearity can be actively used to improve performance. Today, substantial research work is aimed at harnessing the potential of nonlinear system response. Nonlinear effects in optical fibers can be used to realize a variety of optical functions that have practical applications in the field of light wave technology. Nonlinear processes that have been exploited in demonstrations and applications include stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering, as well as aspects of the Kerr effect variously called self-phase modulation, cross-phase modulation, four-photon (four-wave) mixing, modulation instability, Bragg scattering, phase conjugation, nonlinear polarization rotation, and parametric gain. Important examples of established and new emerging nonlinear fiber-based photonic technologies essentially relying on nonlinear phenomena include all-optical signal processing and regeneration in ultrafast telecommunications, optical gating, switching and frequency conversion, optical waveform generation and pulse shaping, optical parametric amplification, Raman amplifiers and lasers, high-power pulsed and continuous-wave lasers, broadband and supercontinuum light sources, and other applications.

This book is a contemporary overview of selected topics in fiber optics, focusing on the latest research results on light shaping using nonlinear optical fibers and exploring the very frontiers of light wave technology. Furthermore, this book provides a simple yet holistic view on the theoretical and application-oriented aspects of the various phenomena encountered by the manipulation of the fundamental properties of light, such as the intensity profile, phase, coherence and state of polarization, in optical fibers. The reader is introduced to some of the most innovative theoretical and experimental developments on fiber-optic light shaping technology, ranging from pulse propagation phenomena to pulse generation and shaping, solitons and rogue waves, novel optical fibers, supercontinuum generation, polarization management, optical signal processing, fiber lasers, optical wave turbulence, and light propagation in disordered fiber media.

Structure of the Book

In a nutshell, the contents of this book are as follows: Chapter 1 presents a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the nonlinear dynamics of the phenomenon of modulation instability, which is the main mechanism for the generation of optical solitons, supercontinuum, and rogue waves in nonlinear optical systems. The peculiar non-degenerate modulation-instability process known as Bragg scattering four-wave mixing and modulation-instability processes occurring in a coherently pumped passive fiber cavity are discussed in detail.

Chapter 2 is a review of the basic principles and recent progress in low-noise optical amplification and all-optical signal processing, mainly toward phase regeneration, electric field decomposition and quantization, for phase (and amplitude) encoded signals of various levels of coding complexity. It highlights the key underpinning technology and presents the current state of the art of such devices, mainly focusing on third-order optical nonlinearity-based platform. Gas-filled hollow-core photonic crystal fibers offer unprecedented opportunities to observe novel nonlinear phenomena. The various properties of gases that can be used to fill these fibers give additional degrees of freedom for investigating...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.3.2017
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Elektrotechnik / Energietechnik
• Schlagworte: Communication technology • Electrical & Electronics Engineering • Elektrotechnik u. Elektronik • fiber optics • Kommunikationstechnik • light wave technology • Optical Communications • Optische Nachrichtentechnik • Photonics • Photonics & Lasers • Photonik u. Laser
• ISBN-10: 1-119-08815-1 / 1119088151
• ISBN-13: 978-1-119-08815-8 / 9781119088158