Abstract
We demonstrate efficient four-wave mixing among different spatial modes in a 1-km long two-mode fiber at telecommunication wavelengths. Two pumps excite the LP01 and LP11 modes, respectively, while the probe signal excites the LP01 mode, and the phase conjugation (PC) and Bragg scattering (BS) idlers are generated in the LP11 mode. For these processes we experimentally characterize their phase matching efficiency and bandwidth and find that they depend critically on the wavelength separation of the two pumps, in good agreement with the numerical study we carried out. We also confirm experimentally that BS has a larger bandwidth than PC for the optimum choice of the pump wavelength separation.
Highlights
We demonstrate efficient four-wave mixing among different spatial modes in a 1-km long two-mode fiber at telecommunication wavelengths
Km-long few-mode fibers of much higher uniformity and low mode coupling are commercially available [2]. This has allowed the recent experimental verification of IM four-wave mixing (FWM) in a 4.7-km long two-mode fiber (TMF) at communication wavelengths [3, 4] and mode conversion based on FWM [5], suggesting that IM FWM may become feasible for optical signal processing as was the case for single-mode fiber optical parametric processes more than two decades ago [6,7,8]
If the wave components of the FWM process are excited in different spatial modes, phase matching can be achieved for large wavelength separations because of the different propagation constants of each mode
Summary
Operating near the zero-dispersion wavelength of the fiber to achieve phase matching is not required by the multi-mode platform so reduced nonlinear signal cross talk is expected Another limiting factor of efficient signal amplification or frequency conversion using FWM is excess noise contributions such as spontaneous Raman scattering [9, 10] and broad-band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from a high-power pump [11]. In quantum communication science, FWM in fibers has been used to generate correlated photon pairs [12], and it generally enables frequency conversion of quantum states of light [15] The latter has been demonstrated in both a photonic crystal fiber [13] and a dispersion-shifted highly nonlinear fiber [14] in single-mode operation, where phase matching was achieved beyond the Raman spectrum by careful dispersion engineering, at the cost of intrinsically narrow bandwidths. We confirm these predictions experimentally in a TMF and present numerical simulations which agree well with our experimental results
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