Abstract:We report on the progress of bismuth oxide glass holey fibers for nonlinear device applications. The use of micron-scale core diameters has resulted in a very high nonlinearity of 1100 W -1 km -1 at 1550 nm. The nonlinear performance of the fibers is evaluated in terms of a newly introduced figure-of-merit for nonlinear device applications. Anomalous dispersion at 1550 nm has been predicted and experimentally confirmed by soliton self-frequency shifting. In addition, we demonstrate the fusionsplicing of a bismuth holey fiber to silica fibers, which has resulted in reduced coupling loss and robust single mode guiding at 1550 nm. 440-442 (2003)

Abstract-This paper reports on the recent progress in the design and fabrication of high-nonlinearity lead-silicate holey fibers (HFs). First, the fabrication of a fiber designed to offer close to the maximum possible nonlinearity per unit length in this glass type is described. A value of γ = 1860 W −1 · km −1 at a wavelength of 1.55 µm is achieved, which is believed to be a record for any fiber at this wavelength. Second, the design and fabrication of a fiber with a slightly reduced nonlinearity but with dispersion-shifted characteristics tailored to enhance broadband supercontinuum (SC) generation when pumped at a wavelength of 1.06 µm-a wavelength readily generated using Yb-doped fiber lasers-are described. SC generation spanning more than 1000 nm is observed for modest pulse energies of ∼ 100 pJ using a short length of this fiber. Finally, the results of numerical simulations of the SC process in the proposed fibers are presented, which are in good agreement with the experimental observations and highlight the importance of accurate control of the zero-dispersion wavelength (ZDW) when optimizing such fibers for SC performance.

We demonstrate four-wave-mixing based wavelength conversion at 1.55 mum in a 2.2 m-long dispersion-shifted lead-silicate holey fiber. For a pump peak power of ~6 W, a conversion efficiency of -6 dB is achieved over a 3-dB bandwidth of ~30 nm. Numerical simulations are used to predict the performance of the fiber for different experimental conditions and to address the potential of dispersion-tailored lead silicate holey fibers in wavelength conversion applications utilizing four-wave-mixing. It is shown that highly efficient and broadband wavelength conversion, covering the entire C-band, can be achieved for such fibers at reasonable optical pump powers and for fiber lengths as short as ~2 m.

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We report the use of a 2-m-long Bismuth Oxide fiber with an ultra-high nonlinearity of ~1100 W(-1)km(-1) in a simple 2R regeneration experiment based on self phase modulation and offset filtering. Numerical simulations and experimental results confirm the suitability of this kind of fiber for 2R regeneration. An improvement in receiver sensitivity of more than 5 dB at 10 Gb/s and 2 dB at 40 Gb/s is achieved.