Fiber-Optical Parametric Amplification of Sub-Picosecond Pulses for High-Speed Optical Communications

Abstract

This article reviews recent results of amplification of short optical pulses using fiber-optical parametric amplifiers. This includes chirped-pulse amplification of 400 fs pulses, error-free amplification of a 640-Gbit/s optical time-division multiplexed signal with less than a 1-dB power penalty, and all-optical phase-preserving amplitude regeneration of a 640-Gbit/s return-to-zero differential phase-shift keying optical time-division multiplexed signal.

Keywords:

• fiber-optic communication
• non-linear fiber optics
• optical signal regeneration
• parametric amplification
• phase-insensitive amplification

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank the Danish Research Council for Technology and Production Sciences for financial support (project 09-066562).

Notes on contributors

Zohreh Lali-Dastjerdi

Zohreh Lali-Dastjerdi received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from Shahid Chamran University, Iran and Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Iran, respectively and the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark. She is involved in research on fiber optical parametric amplification and optical signal processing.

Valentina Cristofori

Valentina Cristofori received the M.Sc. degree in telecommunication engineering from the Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, Italy, in 2009, working in collaboration with the Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée LPMC, Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, where she spent five months in 2008. She received the Ph.D. degree from DTU Fotonik, Department of Photonics Engineering, Technical University of Denmark, Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark, in 2013.

Karsten Rottwitt

Karsten Rottwitt received the M.Sc. degree and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Denmark in 1990 and in 1993, respectively. From 1993 to 1995 he was a post doc at the Center for Broadband Telecommunication at the Technical University of Denmark and spent half a year at Imperial College, London, U.K. From 1995 to 1998 he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories – Undersea Systems Laboratory, and from 1998 to 2000 he worked at Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs Innovations. From 2000 to 2002 he was an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, and since 2002 he has been at DTU Fotonik, at the Technical University of Denmark. He has been active in the field of photonics for more than 20 years, and his research has focused on optical amplifiers and nonlinear effects in fibers. He has authored/coauthored more than 150 papers in journals and conferences and holds 11 patents. Prof. Rottwitt is a member of OSA and has served several conference committees including OFC, Nonlinear Photonics and Optical Sensors. In addition, he has been a reviewer for several journals, and he is currently a member of the editorial board of OPTICA.

Michael Galili

Michael Galili (Aabenraa, Denmark, 1977) Master of Science in Engineering in applied physics with main focus on optics and semiconductor physics, from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) in Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark, in 2003. Ph.D. in Optical communications and signal processing from the COM department at DTU in 2007. The main focus of the Ph.D. work was optical signal processing of high-speed optical data signals. He is currently working at DTU Fotonik as assistant professor. His current research interests include optical signal processing for telecommunication in various materials and platforms as well as ultra high-speed optical communication. He is the first author or co-author of more than 120 peer reviewed scientific publications and he is educating both master and Ph.D. students.

Christophe Peucheret

Christophe Peucheret received the graduate engineering degree from Télécom Bretagne, Brest, France, the M.Sc. degree in microwaves and optoelectronics from University College London, London, U.K., and the Ph.D. degree from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Copenhagen, Denmark. He has been with the Department of Photonics Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark between 1997 and 2013. Since September 2013 he is with the FOTON Laboratory (CNRS UMR 6082), ENSSAT, University of Rennes 1, Lannion, France. His research interests are in the field of optical fibre communication systems, and in particular all-optical signal processing utilizing parametric processes in nonlinear fibres and waveguides.