No abstract

No abstract

In this paper, we have demonstrated two types of polymer waveguide switches with nematic liquid crystal cladding. Although the higher propagation loss in LC materials hinders them from serving as the waveguide film, it has been common that LC exhibiting a large optical anisotropy and an electrically controllable molecular alignment are applied to investigations of slab-waveguide cut off switching as active medium claddings. For this type of switching geometry, a higher contrast ratio is obtainable because simple TE or TM polarized waves may be supported in the planar polymer waveguide.

Mode-locking of semiconductor optical amplifier fiber laser (SOAFL) with 50 fs pulses by extracting the clock of an optical non-return-to-zero (NRZ) data injection is demonstrated. The efficiency of mode-locking in the SOAFL is improved by increasing the seeding power of the large-duty-cycle NRZ data from 3 to 8 dBm into the SOA driven at biased current of 350 mA. After linear dispersion compensation, the mode-locked SOAFL pulsewidth can be further shortened from 20 to 3 ps by increasing the DCF length up to 110 m. By using a booster the EDFA to enlarge the average power of mode-locked SOAFL pulse to 1.3 W, the shortest soliton pulse is occurred after propagating through a 12-m-long SMF. The amplified SOAFL pulse can be compressed to 50 fs after nonlinear compression with its spectral linewidth broadening to 64 nm. Nearly transform-limited time-bandwidth product of 0.436 and the maximum pulse compressing ratio of 400 are reported to date.

No abstract