All-optical supercontinuum switching

verfasst von

Oliver Melchert, Carsten Brée, Ayhan Tajalli, Alexander Pape, Rostislav Arkhipov, Stephanie Willms, Ihar Babushkin, Dmitry Skryabin, Günter Steinmeyer, Uwe Morgner, Ayhan Demircan

Abstract

Efficient all-optical switching is a challenging task as photons are bosons and cannot immediately interact with each other. Consequently, one has to resort to nonlinear optical interactions, with the Kerr gate being the classical example. However, the latter requires strong pulses to switch weaker ones. Numerous approaches have been investigated to overcome the resulting lack of fan-out capability of all-optical switches, most of which relied on types of resonant enhancement of light-matter interaction. Here we experimentally demonstrate a novel approach that utilizes switching between different portions of soliton fission induced supercontinua, exploiting an optical event horizon. This concept enables a high switching efficiency and contrast in a dissipation free setting. Our approach enables fan-out, does not require critical biasing, and is at least partially cascadable. Controlling complex soliton dynamics paves the way towards building all-optical logic gates with advanced functionalities.

Organisationseinheit(en)

PhoenixD: Simulation, Fabrikation und Anwendung optischer Systeme
Institut für Quantenoptik
Hannoversches Zentrum für Optische Technologien (HOT)

Externe Organisation(en)

Weierstraß-Institut für Angewandte Analysis und Stochastik (WIAS) Leibniz-Institut im Forschungsverbund Berlin e. V.
VALO Innovations GmbH
Staatliche Universität Sankt Petersburg
University of Bath
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Max-Born-Institut für Nichtlineare Optik und Kurzzeitspektroskopie (MBI)

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Communications Physics

Band

3

Publikationsdatum

31.08.2020

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Physik und Astronomie (insg.)

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1038/s42005-020-00414-1 (Zugang: Offen)