Abstract

We demonstrate, using numerical simulations, a new all-optical logic gate that combines the mechanisms of soliton dragging and nonlinear-optical loop mirrors (NOLM’s). The design uses specially wrapped low-birefringence polarization-maintaining fiber, which we recently demonstrated in the NOLM configuration. Combining the soliton dragging and NOLM effects increases the timing window of the gate, and using the low-birefringence fiber minimizes the number of cross splices required. For example, we show that by using only one cross splice we can achieve a switching energy of 5.3 pJ and a total timing window of 3.3 pulse widths. We also present a set of design rules for our low-birefringence NOLM.

© 1995 Optical Society of America

Experimental cascaded operation of low-birefringence nonlinear-optical loop mirrors

X. D. Cao, B. C. Barnett, K. H. Ahn, Y. Liang, G. R. Williams, M. Vaziri, and M. N. Islam
Opt. Lett. 21(16) 1211-1213 (1996)

Cascadability and functionality of all-optical low-birefringent nonlinear optical loop mirror: experimental demonstration

K. H. Ahn, X. D. Cao, Y. Liang, B. C. Barnett, S. Chaikamnerd, and M. N. Islam
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 14(5) 1228-1236 (1997)

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Prechirper to relax the timing restrictions for soliton-dragging logic gates

M. N. Islam, C. E. Soccolich, C.-J. Chen, U.-C. Paek, C. M. Schroeder, D. J. DiGiovanni, and J. R. Simpson
Opt. Lett. 16(8) 593-595 (1991)

Low-latency soliton logic gates in erbium-doped fiber amplifiers

B. C. Barnett, C. S. Chiang, and M. N. Islam
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 11(12) 2394-2401 (1994)