Highly nonlinear single-mode chalcogenide fibres for signal processing

Chalcogenide glass based optical waveguides offer many attractive properties in all-optical signal processing because of the large Kerr nonlinearity (up to 420 x silica glass), the associated intrinsic response time of less than 100 fs and low two-photon absorption. These properties together with the convenience of a fiber format allow us to achieve all-optical signal processing at low peak power and in a very compact form. In this talk, a number of non-linear processing tasks will be demonstrated including all-optical regeneration, wavelength conversion and femtosecond pedestal-free pulse compression. In all-optical regeneration, we generate a near step-like power transfer function using only 2.8 m of fiber. Wavelength conversion is demonstrated over a range of 10 nm using 1 m of fiber with 7 ps pulses, peak power of 2.1 W, and 1.4 dB additional penalty. Finally, we will show efficient compression of low-power 6 ps pulses to 420 fs around 1550 nm in a compact all-fiber scheme. These applications show chalcogenide glass fibers are very promising candidate materials for nonlinear all-optic signal processing.