Ultrafast photonic intensity integrator

Abstract

A method for ultrafast photonic time-intensity integration of an arbitrary temporal waveform is, for the first time to our knowledge, proposed and demonstrated. The introduced intensity-integration concept is based on the superposition of mutually incoherent, continuously-time-delayed replicas of the optical intensity waveform to be processed. This idea is practically implemented using optical intensity modulation of the input waveform with a rectangularlike incoherent energy spectrum distribution followed by linear dispersion. The key design specifications of the proposed integration scheme are derived and discussed. Proof-of-concept experiments are performed demonstrating accurate integration of several duration-limited microwave and optical intensity waveforms with time features from the picosecond to the subnanosecond range.

Optical time-domain processing of broadband microwave signals

“…microwave signals, can be achieved using the architecture in Fig. 1 when the incoherent light source is properly shaped to have a uniform energy spectrum (rectangular-like spectrum distribution) [5]. TuC1 (Invited) 8:30 AM -9:00 AM 978-1-4577-0733-9/12/$26.00 ©2012 IEEE Through the intensity modulation of the optical incoherent broadband source, the intensity waveform to be processed is "copied" into an infinite set of incoherently related identical replicas, each one centered at a different wavelength.…”

“…However, given that 'convolution' is a fundamental mathematical operation of general interest in signal theory, the TSC concept has been recently exploited for a wide range of different photonic signal processing applications [4]. This communication reviews recent work on TSC-based techniques aimed at implementing basic timedomain microwave signal processing functionalities, including temporal correlation [4], time integration [5,6] and differentiation [7], chromatic dispersion for real-time Fourier transformation [8] etc., of microwave signals with bandwidths exceeding the GHz range.…”

A photonic microwave and RF integrator based on a transversal filter

“…Approaches to photonic integrators based on transversal structures offer high reconfigurability and accuracy owing to the parallel scheme where each path can be controlled independently [10][11][12]. By tailoring the progressive delay step, RF signal integration with a reconfigurable operation bandwidth can be achieved [10][11][12]. Yet these integrators are still limited by the number of channels.…”

“…where N is the total number of wavelength channels. After the replicas of f (t) are delayed progressively and summed together, the integration of f (t) can be achieved, with a time feature [10] of Δt and a total integration time window of T = N × Δt. Figure 2 shows the experimental up of the photonic RF integrator using a microcomb source.…”

All-optical differential equation solver with constant-coefficient tunable based on a single microring resonator

“…Many optical signal processing systems, which are counterparts of the “basic functionalities” in electronic circuits, have been proposed and demonstrated over the years, including all-optical logics4567, optical differentiation891011121314 and optical integration1516171819 etc. These fundamental units make more complicated optical computing functionalities come true, such as ordinary differential equation (ODE) solvers32021.…”