Enhanced pulse compression in a nonlinear fiber by a wavelength division multiplexed optical pulse

Abstract

A way to compress an optical pulse in a single-mode fiber is presented in this paper. By the use of the cross-phase modulation (CPM) effect caused by the nonlinearity of the optical fiber, a shepherd pulse propagating on a different wavelength beam in a wavelength division multiplexed single-mode fiber system can be used to enhance the pulse compression of a copropagating primary pulse. Although CPM will not cause energy to be exchanged among the beams, the pulse shapes on these beams can be altered significantly. For example, a 1-mW peak power 10-ps primary pulse on a given wavelength beam may be compressed by a factor of as much as 25 when a copropagating 10-ps shepherd pulse of peak power of 49 mW on a different wavelength beam is similarly compressed. Results of a systematic study on this effect are presented in this paper. Furthermore, even when the primary pulse on a given wavelength beam has a peak power of much less than 1 mW, it can still be compressed by the same compression factor as a copropagating shepherd pulse of peak power much larger than 1 mW on a different wavelength beam as it undergoes compression. Through CPM, copropagating pulses on separate beams appear to share the nonlinear effect induced on any one of the pulses on separate beams.