A topical review of numerical and experimental studies of supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber is presented over the full range of experimentally reported parameters, from the femtosecond to the continuous-wave regime. Results from numerical simulations are used to discuss the temporal and spectral characteristics of the supercontinuum, and to interpret the physics of the underlying spectral broadening processes. Particular attention is given to the case of supercontinuum generation seeded by femtosecond pulses in the anomalous group velocity dispersion regime of photonic crystal fiber, where the processes of soliton fission, stimulated Raman scattering, and dispersive wave generation are reviewed in detail. The corresponding intensity and phase stability properties of the supercontinuum spectra generated under different conditions are also discussed.

Supercontinuum generation in photonic crystal fiber

We demonstrate experimentally an optical process in which the spin angular momentum carried by a circularly polarized light beam is converted into orbital angular momentum, leading to the generation of helical modes with a wave-front helicity controlled by the input polarization. This phenomenon requires the interaction of light with matter that is both optically inhomogeneous and anisotropic. The underlying physics is also associated with the so-called Pancharatnam-Berry geometrical phases involved in any inhomogeneous transformation of the optical polarization.

Optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in inhomogeneous anisotropic media

Fiber-optic communication systems form the high-capacity transport infrastructure that enables global broadband data services and advanced Internet applications. The desire for higher per-fiber transport capacities and, at the same time, the drive for lower costs per end-to-end transmitted information bit has led to optically routed networks with high spectral efficiencies. Among other enabling technologies, advanced optical modulation formats have become key to the design of modern wavelength division multiplexed (WDM) fiber systems. In this paper, we review optical modulation formats in the broader context of optically routed WDM networks. We discuss the generation and detection of multigigabit/s intensity- and phase-modulated formats, and highlight their resilience to key impairments found in optical networking, such as optical amplifier noise, multipath interference, chromatic dispersion, polarization-mode dispersion, WDM crosstalk, concatenated optical filtering, and fiber nonlinearity

Advanced Optical Modulation Formats

In the course of the past several years, a new level of understanding has been achieved about conditions for the existence, stability, and generation of spatiotemporal optical solitons, which are nondiffracting and nondispersing wavepackets propagating in nonlinear optical media. Experimentally, effectively two-dimensional (2D) spatiotemporal solitons that overcome diffraction in one transverse spatial dimension have been created in quadratic nonlinear media. With regard to the theory, fundamentally new features of light pulses that self-trap in one or two transverse spatial dimensions and do not spread out in time, when propagating in various optical media, were thoroughly investigated in models with various nonlinearities. Stable vorticity-carrying spatiotemporal solitons have been predicted too, in media with competing nonlinearities (quadratic–cubic or cubic–quintic). This article offers an up-to-date survey of experimental and theoretical results in this field. Both achievements and outstanding difficulties are reviewed, and open problems are highlighted. Also briefly described are recent predictions for stable 2D and 3D solitons in Bose–Einstein condensates supported by full or low-dimensional optical lattices.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1464-4266/7/5/R02/pdf

Spatiotemporal optical solitons

Two types of photomodulation of orientations of liquid crystals (LCs) are reviewed: 1) order–disorder phase transitions of LCs induced by photochemical reactions of photochromic molecules and 2) order–order alignment change of LCs (change in LC directors) induced by photochemical reactions or without photochemical events. Both processes produce a large refractive-index modulation, which forms the basis of a range of photonic applications. Various modes of photomodulation of orientations of LCs with plausible mechanisms and their possible applications in photonics are described.

Photomodulation of liquid crystal orientations for photonic applications

Optical Fiber Propagation Optical Amplifiers Optical Transmission Systems Soliton Optical Communications Repeaterless Systems Long Distance TDM Transmission WDM Optically Amplified Systems Transmission in All-Optical Networks Appendices Index

Nonlinear Optical Communication Networks

Periodically spaced amplifiers along a transoceanic cable provide the phase-matching condition for a four-wave mixing process owing to Kerr nonlinearity. A new kind of sideband instability, shows up in both positive and negative dispersion regimes that is similar to modulation instability. A comparison with the sideband instability that was recently discovered for solitons is carried out.

Sideband instability induced by periodic power variation in long-distance fiber links

It is experimentally demonstrated that a circularly polarized laser beam normally incident on a homeotropically aligned nematic film can induce a collective precession of the molecules in the film if the laser intensity is above the threshold for the Freedericksz transition. The effect is shown to result from a transfer of angular momentum from the laser beam to the medium.

Collective rotation of molecules driven by the angular momentum of light in a nematic film.

In this paper, we show a comparison among the performance of single- and multichannel optical systems considering NRZ and soliton signals. The results have been obtained by means of numerical simulations, taking into consideration the chromatic dispersion, the Kerr nonlinearity, the fiber loss, and the ASE noise of the optical amplifiers. The performance of IM-DD and coherent asynchronous ASK systems have been evaluated in terms of the Q factor. We have considered the propagation in links encompassing conventional step-index fibers, DS fibers and in links with two different dispersion management techniques in which the chromatic dispersion is varied along the propagation distance both in randomly and in deterministically way. The effects of the in-line filtering process are mainly investigated in soliton propagation.

Comparison of the performance of optically amplified transmission systems

The optimization of the performance of installed standard-monomode fibers based optical transmission systems with in-line semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA's) is reported in this paper. Both solitons and nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) signals are studied and their capacities are compared. This investigation is based on numerical simulations by solving the nonlinear Schrodinger equations with the split-step method while the SOA is simulated with two different models that we show to be in a good agreement, transmissions over distances of the order of several hundreds of kilometers are shown to be possible, and very long distances can be reached especially if in-line sliding filters are used.

/pdf/cascaded-optical-communication-systems-with-in-line-4rthtjhwk2.pdf

Marina Settembre

Papers

Nonlinear Optical Communication Networks

Sideband instability induced by periodic power variation in long-distance fiber links

Collective rotation of molecules driven by the angular momentum of light in a nematic film.

Comparison of the performance of optically amplified transmission systems

Cascaded optical communication systems with in-line semiconductor optical amplifiers