Dispersion-imbalanced Nonlinear Loop Mirror Research Articles

Generating a high-extinction-ratio pulse from a phase-modulated optical signal with a dispersion-imbalanced nonlinear loop mirror

We demonstrate a method for generating ultrashort pulses from a phase-modulated optical signal by using a dispersion-imbalanced nonlinear loop mirror instead of the traditional linear dispersion medium. The extinction ratio of the pulses is greatly improved at the same time. By controlling the bandwidth of the phase-modulated signal and the dispersion map of the dispersion-imbalanced nonlinear loop mirror, we can control the pulse width from several picoseconds to hundreds of femtoseconds.

Pulse amplitude equalization in a harmonically modelocked fiber laser using a dispersion imbalanced non-linear loop mirror

In this paper, we demonstrate a novel method of pulse-amplitude-equalization in a 10 GHz harmonically mode-locked fiber ring laser by adding a dispersion imbalanced non-linear loop mirror (DI-NOLM) in the laser cavity. The non-linear switching characteristic of a DI-NOLM can make the laser operate at additive pulse mode-locking (APM) or additive pulse limiting (APL) mode. When the laser was biased at APL region, supermode noise was suppressed and the laser output was more stable against amplitude fluctuations.

In-band amplified spontaneous emission noise filtering with a dispersion-imbalanced nonlinear loop mirror

This paper reports the removal of in-band amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) noise in a 10 Gb/s noise-loaded return-to-zero (RZ) signal using a dispersion-imbalanced loop mirror. The resulting receiver sensitivity is improved from -37.0 dBm to -37.7 dBm. The dependence of receiver sensitivity on the loop mirror bias is also investigated, and the optimal bias point is found to be where the loop transmissivity decreases with increasing input power.