Pulse Delay Via Tunable White Light Cavities Using Fiber-Optic Resonators

Abstract

Previously, we proposed a data buffering system that makes use of a pair of white light cavities 1 . For application to telecommunication systems, it would be convenient to realize such a device using fiber optic resonators. In this paper, we present the design of such a system, where the white light cavity effect is produced by using stimulated Brillouin scattering. The system consists of a pair of fiber optic white light cavities placed in series. As in the original proposal, the delay time can be controlled independently of the bandwidth of the data pulses. Furthermore, we show how the bandwidth of the system can be made as large as several times the Brillouin frequency shift. We also show that the net delay achievable in such a buffer can be significantly larger than what can be achieved using a conventional recirculating loop buffer.

Wideband coherent perfect absorber based on white-light cavity

“…Recently, a new class of cavities characterized by a spectrally wide resonance has been proposed and studied. Resonators of this class, often referred to as white-light cavities (WLCs) [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14], include intra-cavity superluminal phase element, designed to provide a phase shift with a slope that is opposite in sign and equal in magnitude to that accumulated by light propagation through the empty cavity. Such a phase element counters the regular phase accumulation inside the cavity and satisfies the resonance phase condition over a band of frequencies, thus providing a spectrally wide cavity resonance, without sacrificing the quality factor.…”

“…Such losses are intrinsic to negative phase slope components, which are commonly realized using atomic absorption lines [12], interferometers, and Bragg-gratings [7]. WLCs have been the focus of much attention due to their attractiveness for various applications such as ultra-sensitive sensors [6][7][8][9][10] and optical buffering components [13]. Nevertheless, WLCs exhibit inherent losses that are often undesirable and require careful attention [7].…”

Trap-door optical buffering using a flat-top coupled microring filter: the superluminal cavity approach

“…Indeed, most slow-light-based delay lines exhibit DBPs that are of the order of unity. This rather inherent limitation inspired studies utilizing dynamic approaches to trap and release optical pulses [13][14][15][16][17]. Among these approaches, the most practical one is probably the "trap-door" buffer [14,15], a version of which has also been demonstrated experimentally [15].…”

“…The utilization of microring resonators in the buffer concept presented in [15,18] introduces bandwidth limitations as well as dispersion effects due to the properties of the microring's spectral response. In [14,18] the use of white-light-cavity (WLC)-based mirrors was proposed to attain a larger bandwidth. Nevertheless, a practical realization of this concept using conventional systems such as fiber cavities and Brillouin gain peaks has proved to be very difficult to realize [19,20].…”

“…The most critical issue in a WLC is, of course, the realization of a phase component with the desired response. Such phase elements have been proposed and demonstrated by using vapor cells, which were optically pumped in a precise configuration [14,27], and by an intracavity resonator [26]. In the latter approach, a phase response satisfying Eq.…”