Abstract
We provide a perspective overview of the emerging field of nonlinear optics in multimode optical fibers. These fibers enable new methods for the ultrafast light-activated control of temporal, spatial, and spectral degrees of freedom of intense, pulsed beams of light, for a range of different technological applications.
Highlights
Nonlinear optical effects in multimode optical fibers (MMFs), such as the modal-phase matching of four-wave mixing (FWM) processes, have been known for a long time
Over the past 10 years, there has been a revival of interest in pulse propagation in multimode fibers, motivated by the exponential growth of traffic demand in optical networks on the one hand, and a transmission capacity increase associated with the spatial dimension, or spatial division multiplexing (SDM), on the other hand
By observing that the LP01 and LP11 modes of a bimodal stepindex MMF have the same group-velocity at a particular wavelength (626.5 nm in their experiment), one obtains that propagation in a bimodal MMF is described by a set of two incoherently coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations (NLSEs), where the cross-phase modulation (XPM) term is larger than self-phase modulation (SPM)
Summary
Nonlinear optical effects in multimode optical fibers (MMFs), such as the modal-phase matching of four-wave mixing (FWM) processes, have been known for a long time. We provide our perspectives on recent studies involving nonlinear optical pulse propagation in multimode optical fibers. One of the most promising fields of application of nonlinear MMFs is that of fiber lasers Research in this field has been booming in recent years: As presented in Sec. VI, the nonlinear transmission of a short span of graded-index (GRIN) MMF between single-mode fibers leads to an ultrafast saturable absorber mechanism with a high damage threshold. Here we summarize our perspective views for future research and technology applications
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