We present a theoretical analysis of recently demonstrated ultrafast all-optical interferometric switching devices (based on Sagnac and Mach-Zehnder interferometers) that use a large optical nonlinearity in a resonant regime. These devices achieve ~10-ps switching windows and do not require high-energy optical control pulses. We theoretically analyze and compare one Sagnac and two Mach-Zehnder switching configurations.

Raman amplification is investigated both experimentally and numerically. It is demonstrated that, depending on the different pump wavelength combinations, the shape as well as the amount of the fiber gain can be altered accordingly. A numerical model is presented that includes the relevant physical effects to describe properly the different pump and signal interactions. Results of several pump combinations are compared to experimental data and used to derive numerical values for the local fiber gain.

An OTDM multihop prototype network, developed at Princeton University, is presented. By employing a new self-routing scheme with special address coding suitable for optical packet switching, 100Gbit/s optical packet switching in an 8-node transparent shuffle network is demonstrated offering extremely high bandwidth and low latency

The nonlinear index of refraction in a resonant region has been determined by the use of a fiber-based Mach--Zehnder interferometer to measure the temporal fringe shift between two signals. The measurement technique is direct and does not require additional amplitude information for the extraction of the nonlinear index of refraction. This technique has been used to measure the temporal response of an InGaAsP semiconductor optical amplifier at 1.313 µm.