Dragging and Retiming of Ultrafast Pulses Using Fiber Nonlinearity

Optical pulses with picosecond-duration, high-repetition-rates and low timing jitter are in high demand in many applications such as high-speed optical communication, optical analog-to-digital conversion, and optical computing. By initiating active mode-locking of erbium-doped fiber lasers and utilizing the nonlinear effect inside the fiber, picosecond/subpicosecond pulses in the 1.55 μm wavelength-region with repetition rates from a few tens of gigahertz up to over 100 GHz and wavelength-tunability over 1530-1570 nm can be produced [1-3]. The wavelength range can be extended further by externally exploiting in optical fiber various nonlinear processes, such as supercontinuum generation [4] and soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS) [5, 6].