An adjustable construction of a half-wave plate is described. The device consists of three birefringent plates with arbitrary thicknesses. Owing to the variable angles between the optical axes of these plates, it could be easily adjusted to a different wavelength of laser radiation.
We observe pulse breakup for 650-fs pulses propagating through 9 m of optical fiber followed by an InGaAsP amplifier. The pulses are broadened by a factor of two, and a second peak appears at about 2 ps after the main peak. To identify the responsible mechanisms, we solve numerically the propagation equations including nonlinear carrier dynamics and gain dispersion. We attribute the broadening to two photon absorption and the breakup to the interplay between linear gain dispersion and frequency chirp in the amplifier. These pulse distortions could impact devices involving fibers and semiconductor amplifiers for high speed (Ͼ200 Gb/s͒ optical switching or transmission.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.