We present a Photonic Spectral Processor (PSP) that provides both fine spectral resolution and broad bandwidth support by dispersing light over two-dimensional space using the crossed-grating approach. The PSP uses a hybrid guided wave/free-space optics arrangement, where a waveguide grating router implemented in silica waveguides disperses the light in one dimension with a 100 GHz FSR and a bulk 1200 gr/mm diffraction grating disperses the light along the second (crossed) dimension. The diffracted light is focused by a lens onto a liquid-crystal on silicon, two-dimensional, phase-only, spatial light modulator, which we use to prescribe phase and amplitude to the signal’s spectral components. With the 2-D PSP arrangement we are able to address frequency components at 0.2 GHz/column with an optical resolution of 3.3 GHz covering 40 C-band channels. ©2011 Optical Society of America

We investigate and analyze temporal soliton interactions with a dispersive truncated Airy pulse traveling in a nonlinear fiber at the same center wavelength (or frequency), via split step Fourier numerical simulation. Truncated Airy pulses, which remain self-similar during propagation and have a ballistic trajectory in the retarded time frame, can interact with a nearby soliton by its accelerating wavefront property. We find by tracking the fundamental parameters of the emergent soliton-time position, amplitude, phase and frequency—that they alter due to the primary collision with the Airy main lobe and the continuous copropagation with the dispersed Airy background. These interactions are found to resemble coherent interactions when the initial time separation is small and incoherent at others. This is due to spectral content repositioning within the Airy pulse, changing the nature of interaction from coherent to incoherent. Following the collision, the soliton intensity oscillates as it relaxes. The initial parameters of the Airy pulse such as initial phase, amplitude and time position are varied to better understand the nature of the interactions. ©2011 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: (190.0190) Nonlinear

We report the first demonstration, to our knowledge, of time-to-space conversion of 1.55 μm femtosecond optical pulses using nondegenerate, collinearly phase-matched sum-frequency generation. A quasi-monochromatic and background-free output signal spanning a time window of 35 ps and with a pulse image width of 350 fs was achieved. The resulting serial-to-parallel resolution factor of 100 demonstrates the potential for all-optical complete frame demultiplexing of a 1 Tbit-s optical time-division multiplexing bit stream. © 2011 Optical Society of America

We simulate and analyze the propagation of truncated temporal Airy pulses in a single mode fiber in the presence of self-phase modulation and anomalous dispersion as a function of the launched Airy power and truncation coefficient. Soliton pulse shedding is observed, where the emergent soliton parameters depend on the launched Airy pulse characteristics. The Soliton temporal position shifts to earlier times with higher launched powers due to an earlier shedding event and with greater energy in the Airy tail due to collisions with the accelerating lobes. In spite of the Airy energy loss to the shed Soliton, the Airy pulse continues to exhibit the unique property of acceleration in time and the main lobe recovers from the energy loss (healing property of Airy waveforms). ©2011 Optical Society of America

We demonstrate a tunable fiber ring laser employing a two-dimensional dispersion arrangement filter, with the lasing determined by a liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) spatial light modulator. Lasing wavelengths can be tuned discontinuously across the communication C-band at an addressable resolution of less than 200 MHz. We introduce full characterization of the laser output including phase and amplitude stability and short and long-term bandwidth measurements. © 2011 Optical Society of America

We propose and demonstrate a compact tunable optical dispersion compensation (TODC) device with a 100 GHz free spectral range capable of mitigating chromatic dispersion impairments. The TODC is based on longitudinal movement of a waveguide grating router, resulting in chromatic dispersion compensation of 1000 ps/nm. We employed our TODC device for compensating 42.8 Gbit/sec differential phase-shifting keying signal, transmitted over 50km fiber with a −2 dB power penalty at 10⁻⁹.

We analyze the performance of a spatial fiber switching system when using a pixelized mirror, such as a LCoS or MEMS spatial light modulator, in place of a large tilting micromirror. Our findings demonstrate the dependence of insertion losses on tilt angles or fiber counts, and the dependence of the crosstalk in the number of phase quantization levels and random phase errors. The former effects can be minimized by satisfying a relationship between the tilt angle to a fiber, the pitch of the array, and the optical wavelength.