All-optical wavelength converter based on self-phase modulation effects in microstructure fibers

Abstract

An all-optical tunable wavelength converter using a combination of self-phase modulation (SPM) effects in highly nonlinear microstructure fibers and narrowband spectral filtering is investigated, which is reported for the first time to our knowledge. Wavelength conversion over a±4nm bandwidth of a 10Gb/s date rate is obtained with good efficiency. A 25-m-long microstructure fiber with zero-dispersion wavelength at 800nm is used as the nonlinear medium. The core diameter of microstructure fiber is 2.4µm and the outer diameter is 125µm. The nonlinearity is γ=36km-1W-1, which is 20 times higher that that of a conversional dispersion-shifted fiber. The dispersion at the wavelength of 1550nm is ~+150ps/nm-km and the loss is 40dB/km.