Generation of time-aligned picosecond pulses on wavelength-division-multiplexed beams in a nonlinear fiber

摘要

A fundamentally different way to generate time-aligned data pulses on wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) beams in a single-mode fiber is found. A large-amplitude pulse called a shepherd pulse is launched on one of the copropagating beams (shepherd pulse is defined as a pulse that can affect other copropagating pulses in a WDM format while maintaining its own propagation behavior). Initially at the launching plane no other pulse exists on any of the other copropagating wavelength-division-multiplexed beams. Due to the nonlinear cross-phase modulation effect, time-aligned pulses are generated on all other beams after a given fiber length. Both theoretical and experimental results are presented. [References: 26]