Tunable slow and fast light with large bandwidth in the band-edge of gain spectrum of the wide band fiber optical parametric amplifier

Abstract

We propose a novel method theoretically to generate the slow and fast light with large bandwidth and low gains, which is based on the parametric process in fiber. In our scheme, the wide band fiber optical parametric amplifier is employed and the whole signal bandwidth should be located at a certain frequency range of the band-edge of gain spectrum, and then signal waves will be delayed or advanced with low signal gains because of the peculiar feature of signal gain and phase shift. By changing the pump power, the delay time is continuously-tunable optically. The ultimate delay bandwidth and the delay bandwidth product are constrained by the shape of time delay spectrum. Our simulation verifies that 22.4 ps delay or advanced time for the bandwidth of 10 GHz with little distortion can be obtained at certain wavelengths in the optical communication waveband, and their gains are nearly zero. The tunable range is from 0 ps to 22.4 ps for the signal bandwidth of 10 GHz, and it is from 0 ps to 15.6 ps for the bandwidth of 15 GHz. This type of slow and fast light in wide band FOPA has the potential capability to produce the tunable slow and fast light for large bandwidth with low signal gains in future.