摘要 |
High incremental gain and ultrafast switching operation are achieved in a fiber interferometer switch by employing a control optical signal in one arm of the interferometer and a pump optical signal split between both arms of the interferometer wherein signal frequencies are in the anomalous group velocity dispersion region of only one arm of the fiber interferometer to cause modulation instability to occur. Net gain in excess of 104 has been observed where net gain is the ratio of device output peak power to control signal input power. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the interferometer is a balanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer utilizing a single mode, dispersion shifted, polarization-preserving optical fiber.
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