A Review of Slow- and Fast-Light Based on Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Future Optical Communication Networks

Ronny Henker,Andreas T Schwarzbacher,Kai-Uwe Lauterbach,Markus Junker,Thomas Schneider,Andrzej Wiatrek,Max J Ammann

doi:10.26552/com.c.2008.4.45-52

Abstract

Slow- and Fast-Light has been investigated during the last years as a powerful tool to reduce and increase the group velocity of light pulses by light. It has enjoyed much recent interest because of the practical applications for telecommunication and information systems. Among these are optical signal processing, radio frequency-photonics, nonlinear optics and time domain spectroscopy. Furthermore, it can be seen as a key technology for optical delay lines, buffers, equalizers and synchronizers in packet switched networks. For a realization, there are different methods and material systems possible. Among them the nonlinear effect of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) is of special interest. This article gives an overview about the fundamentals and some experimental results of the Slow- and Fast-Light effect based on the SBS in optical fibers.

Highlights

Today’s data networks consist of optical fibers for the transport of data signals and network nodes for their switching through the net
The data traffic is nearly doubled in transport networks every year
This is not a big problem for optical transmission technologies because every fiber is able to transmit more than 100 channels with data rates of 10 or 40 Gbit/s

Summary

Introduction

Today’s data networks consist of optical fibers for the transport of data signals and network nodes for their switching through the net. The data traffic is nearly doubled in transport networks every year This is not a big problem for optical transmission technologies because every fiber is able to transmit more than 100 channels with data rates of 10 or 40 Gbit/s. A large change of the group delay is caused automatically by a strong material dispersion Such a dispersion occurs if the frequency of the light is nearby material resonances which results in absorption or amplification processes [2]. Amplification effects like in Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA) [11] and semiconductor amplifiers (SOA) [12] can be used All these methods have the disadvantage that the delay is very low and the effort is high. The effect of SBS is of very special interest [15]

Brillouin scattering

Slow and Fast-Light based on SBS

D TSBS g1 c1

Findings

Limits of the method