There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Nonlinear photonic chips can generate and process signals all-optically with far superior performance to that possible electronically — particularly with respect to speed. Although silicon-on-insulator has been the leading platform for nonlinear optics, its high two-photon absorption at telecommunication wavelengths poses a fundamental limitation. We review recent progress in non-silicon CMOS-compatible platforms for nonlinear optics, with a focus on Si3N4 and Hydex®. These material systems have opened up many new capabilities such as on-chip optical frequency comb generation and ultrafast optical pulse generation and measurement. We highlight their potential future impact as well as the challenges to achieving practical solutions for many key applications. This article reviews recent progress in the use of silicon nitride and Hydex as non-silicon-based CMOS-compatible platforms for nonlinear optics. New capabilities such as on-chip optical frequency comb generation, ultrafast optical pulse generation and measurement using these materials, and their potential future impact and challenges are covered.

New CMOS-compatible platforms based on silicon nitride and hydex for nonlinear optics

This paper presents a novel digital feedforward carrier recovery algorithm for arbitrary M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) constellations in an intradyne coherent optical receiver. The approach does not contain any feedback loop and is therefore highly tolerant against laser phase noise. This is crucial, especially for higher order QAM constellations, which inherently have a smaller phase noise tolerance due to the lower spacing between adjacent constellation points. In addition to the mathematical description of the proposed carrier recovery algorithm also a possible hardware-efficient implementation in a parallelized system is presented and the performance of the algorithm is evaluated by Monte Carlo simulations for square 4-QAM (QPSK), 16-QAM, 64-QAM, and 256-QAM. For the simulations ASE noise and laser phase noise are considered as well as analog-to-digital converter (ADC) and internal resolution effects. For a 1 dB penalty at BER = 10-3, linewidth times symbol duration products of 4.1 x 10-4 (4-QAM), 1.4 x 10-4 (16-QAM), 4.0 x 10-5 (64-QAM) and 8.0 x 10-6 (256-QAM) are tolerable.

Hardware-Efficient Coherent Digital Receiver Concept With Feedforward Carrier Recovery for $M$ -QAM Constellations

Polymer composites are one of the most attractive near-term means to exploit the unique properties of carbon nanotubes and graphene. This is particularly true for composites aimed at electronics and photonics, where a number of promising applications have already been demonstrated. One such example is nanotube-based saturable absorbers. These can be used as all-optical switches, optical amplifier noise suppressors, or mode-lockers to generate ultrashort laser pulses. Here, we review various aspects of fabrication, characterization, device implementation and operation of nanotube-polymer composites to be used in photonic applications. We also summarize recent results on graphene-based saturable absorbers for ultrafast lasers.

Nanotube–Polymer Composites for Ultrafast Photonics

The drive for higher performance in optical fiber systems has renewed interest in coherent detection. We review detection methods, including noncoherent, differentially coherent, and coherent detection, as well as a hybrid method. We compare modulation methods encoding information in various degrees of freedom (DOF). Polarization-multiplexed quadrature-amplitude modulation maximizes spectral efficiency and power efficiency, by utilizing all four available DOF, the two field quadratures in the two polarizations. Dual-polarization homodyne or heterodyne downconversion are linear processes that can fully recover the received signal field in these four DOF. When downconverted signals are sampled at the Nyquist rate, compensation of transmission impairments can be performed using digital signal processing (DSP). Linear impairments, including chromatic dispersion and polarization-mode dispersion, can be compensated quasi-exactly using finite impulse response filters. Some nonlinear impairments, such as intra-channel four-wave mixing and nonlinear phase noise, can be compensated partially. Carrier phase recovery can be performed using feedforward methods, even when phase-locked loops may fail due to delay constraints. DSP-based compensation enables a receiver to adapt to time-varying impairments, and facilitates use of advanced forward-error-correction codes. We discuss both single- and multi-carrier system implementations. For a given modulation format, using coherent detection, they offer fundamentally the same spectral efficiency and power efficiency, but may differ in practice, because of different impairments and implementation details. With anticipated advances in analog-to-digital converters and integrated circuit technology, DSP-based coherent receivers at bit rates up to 100 Gbit/s should become practical within the next few years.

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Coherent detection in optical fiber systems

Space-division multiplexing (SDM) is an attractive technique for dramatically enhancing the transmission capacity in a single optical fiber. Recently, ultradense SDM transmission experiments with a spatial multiplicity of over 100 have been reported by using few mode multicore fibers (FM-MCFs). Considering the maximum capacity of around 100 Tb/s reported in single-mode single-core fiber transmission experiments, the capacity in FM-MCF transmission with more than 100 spatial channels is expected to reach 10 peta-b/s; however, the maximum capacity has been limited to 2 peta-b/s. In this paper, we demonstrate ultradense SDM transmission of 739 WDM 12-Gbd dual polarization—64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)/16-QAM signals over 11.3-km 6-mode 19-core fiber using the C+L band, achieving a record fiber capacity of 10.16 peta-b/s with an aggregate spectral efficiency of 1099.9 b/s/Hz.

10.16-Peta-B/s Dense SDM/WDM Transmission Over 6-Mode 19-Core Fiber Across the C+L Band

This paper describes the theoretical and experimental study of a new technique for optical frequency domain ranging (OFDR) by a frequency-shifted feedback (FSF) laser. In conventional OFDR, a frequency chirped single-mode laser is used as a light source to convert a distance into a beat frequency, and a tradeoff exists between measurement range and resolution. The FSF laser output consists of periodically generated chirped frequency components whose chirp rate is faster than 100 PHz/s (P=10/sup 15/), By use of the FSF laser, the tradeoff is removed and long-distance high-resolution OFDR is realized In the experiment, a distance of 18.5 km was measured with a resolution of 20 mm.

Optical frequency domain ranging by a frequency-shifted feedback laser

We demonstrate a record QAM multiplicity of 1024 levels in a single-carrier coherent transmission. A frequency-domain equalization technique and a back-propagation method are adopted to compensate for distortions caused by hardware imperfections and fiber impairments, respectively. As a result, 60 Gbit/s polarization-multiplexed transmission over 150-km has been achieved at 3 Gsymbol/s within an optical bandwidth of only 4.05 GHz.

1024 QAM (60 Gbit/s) single-carrier coherent optical transmission over 150 km.

We report saturable absorber materials in the 1.5 microm band that consist of poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and polystyrene (PS) polymers with single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). A very uniform dispersion of SWNT in PMMA and PS polymers has been realized by using chlorobenzene or tetrahydrofuran as a dispersion solvent. These materials, which are as thick as 1 mm, are easily optically polished on both surfaces. This was difficult to achieve with previous thin-film materials. By incorporating PMMA/SWNT as a saturable absorber, a 171 fs pulse is successfully generated in a passively mode-locked fiber laser.

Polymer saturable absorber materials in the 1.5 μm band using poly-methyl-methacrylate and polystyrene with single-wall carbon nanotubes and their application to a femtosecond laser

We describe a 2048 QAM single-carrier coherent optical transmission over 150 km in detail. The OSNR at the transmitter was increased by 5 dB and the phase noise at the receiver was reduced from 0.35 to 0.17 degrees compared with a previous 1024 QAM transmission. Furthermore, we employed an A/D converter with a higher ENOB (7 bit) to guarantee the SNR of the digital QAM data, and introduced a polarization-demultiplexing algorithm to fast track the polarization state transition. As a result, a 66 Gbit/s polarization-multiplexed 2048 QAM signal was successfully transmitted within an optical bandwidth of 3.6 GHz including a pilot tone, and a potential SE of 15.3 bit/s/Hz under a 20% FEC overhead was achieved.

Masato Yoshida

Papers

10.16-Peta-B/s Dense SDM/WDM Transmission Over 6-Mode 19-Core Fiber Across the C+L Band

Optical frequency domain ranging by a frequency-shifted feedback laser

1024 QAM (60 Gbit/s) single-carrier coherent optical transmission over 150 km.

Polymer saturable absorber materials in the 1.5 μm band using poly-methyl-methacrylate and polystyrene with single-wall carbon nanotubes and their application to a femtosecond laser

2048 QAM (66 Gbit/s) single-carrier coherent optical transmission over 150 km with a potential SE of 15.3 bit/s/Hz