Properties of a novel conŽ guration of an optical (spatio-temporal) pulse compressor, that is based on a Kerr-type planar waveguide into which two pulses are simultaneously launched, are studied. It is assumed that the pulse which is the subject of the compression propagates in the anomalous dispersion regime, while the auxiliary pulse is in normal dispersion. The best parameters of the propose...

We demonstrate a method for adiabatically self-tuning a silicon microdisk resonator. This mechanism is not only able to sensitively probe the fast nonlinear cavity dynamics, but also provides various optical functionalities like pulse compression, shaping, and tunable time delay.

We investigate the intracavity pulse dynamics inside dispersion-managed mode-locked fiber lasers, and show numerically that for a relatively wide range of parameters, pulse compression dynamics in the passive anomalous fiber can be accompanied by a significant enhancement of the spectral width by a factor close to 3. Varying the average cavity dispersion also reveals chaotic dynamics for certai...

The direct optimization of complex filter error—modulo zerothand first-order phase— is proposed as an alternative to GDD optimization. In the appropriate norm, this is equivalent to minimizing the error energy for a given input. ©2004 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (320.5520) Ultrafast optics, pulse compression; (310.6860) Thin films, optical properties

We present universal formulas for the spectral and temporal output optical fields from a linear traveling-wave medium whose refractive index changes during its propagation within the medium. These formulas agree with known changes in central wavelength and energy that are associated with adiabatic wavelength conversion (AWC). Moreover, they reveal new changes to the optical pulses that have not...

We demonstrate a high-quality cavity-free 10 GHz 680 fs pulse source starting from a continuous wave (CW) laser. The pulse source is employed in a 640 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) OTDM data generation and demultiplexing experiment, where the error-free bit error rate (BER) performance confirms the high pulse quality. The pulse source is based on a linear pulse compression stage followed by two po...

Solitons are nonlinear waves that exhibit invariant or recurrent behaviour as they propagate. Precise control of dispersion and nonlinear effects governs soliton propagation and, through the formation of higher-order solitons, permits pulse compression. In recent years the development of photonic crystals—highly dispersive periodic dielectric media—has attracted a great deal of attention due to...

Digital signal processing, holography, and quantum and classical information processing rely heavily upon recording the amplitude and phase of coherent optical signals. One method for achieving coherent information storage makes use of electromagnetically induced transparency. Storage is achieved by compressing the optical pulse using the steep dispersion of the electromagnetically induced tran...

The possibilities and limitations of linear compression of positively chirped pulses in the negative-dispersion region of a step-index large mode-area single-mode optical fibre are investigated for the first time. Analytical formulae for critical values of radiation power are found, below which pedestal-free pulse compression is possible down to the Fourier limit. It is demonstrated that at rad...