All-optical supercontinuum switching

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

doi:10.1038/s42005-020-00414-1

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.

Highlights

Efficient all-optical switching is a challenging task as photons are bosons and cannot immediately interact with each other
Simulations have been performed for the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation (GNLSE) for the complex field envelope[18] as well as for the forward unidirectional propagation equation for the analytic signal[48,49]
We experimentally demonstrated a new route toward optical switching that circumvents most of the complications present in resonant enhancement

Summary

Introduction

Efficient all-optical switching is a challenging task as photons are bosons and cannot immediately interact with each other. 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. This switching process was discussed as an optical analogy to the event horizon[30], and has been used to investigate diametric acceleration allowing to mimic interaction with negative masses[31,32], quantum bouncing in cold atomic clouds[33], or optical rogue wave emergence[34,35,36] The latter example can be understood as quantum noise induced optical switching, demonstrating the potential for minute fluctuations controlling large optical energies. Early experimental realisations have been less efficient than anticipated[37], and the overall concept is just beginning to develop[38]

Methods

Results

Conclusion