[INVITED] Self-induced polarization tracking, tunneling effect and modal attraction in optical fiber

Year: 2016

Authors: Guasoni M., Morin P., Bony P.-Y., Wabnitz S., Fatome J.

Autors Affiliation: Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne,UMR6303 CNRS-Université Bourgogne Franche Comté, 9 avenue Alain Savary, 21078 Dijon, France;
Department of Information Engineering, Università di Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia, Italy

Abstract: In this paper, we report the observation and exploitation of the capability of light to self-organize its state-of-polarization, upon propagation in optical fibers, by means of a device called Omnipolarizer. The principle of operation of this system consists in a counter-propagating four-wave mixing interaction between an incident signal and its backward replica generated at the fiber output thanks to a reflective fiber loop. We have exploited this self-induced polarization tracking phenomenon for all-optical data processing and successfully demonstrated the spontaneous repolarization of a 40-Gbit/s On-Off keying optical signal without noticeable impairments. Moreover, the strong local coupling between the two counter-propagating waves has also revealed a fascinating aspect of the Omnipolarizer called polarization-based tunneling effect. This intrinsic property enables us to instantaneously let \”jump\” a polarization information onto the reflected signal, long before the expected time-of-flight induced by the round-trip along the fiber span. Finally, we discuss how the concept of self-organization could be generalized to multimode fibers, which paves the way to new important applications in the framework of spatial-mode multiplexing. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Journal/Review: OPTICS AND LASER TECHNOLOGY

Volume: 80      Pages from: 247  to: 259

More Information: This research was funded by the European Research Council under Grant agreement 306633, ERC PETAL. https://www.facebook.com/petal.inside. We also thank the financial support of the Conseil Regional de Bourgogne in the frame work of the Photcom project, FEDER and the Labex ACTION (ANR-11-LABX-0001-01). The work of S. W. was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR, Project no. 2012BFNWZ2). We thank Drs. D. Sugny, H. R. Jauslin, A. Picozzi, G. Millot and especially S. Pitois for fruitful discussions.
KeyWords: Data handling; Fibers; Four wave mixing; Nonlinear optics; Optical communication; Optical data processing; Optical fibers; Polarization, All-optical data processing; Counter propagating waves; Fiber optics communication; Induced polarization; Intrinsic property; Polarization control; Spatial mode multiplexing; State of polarization, Multimode fibers
DOI: 10.1016/j.optlastec.2015.12.011

Citations: 3
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