Study on all-optical switching by nonlinear optical loop mirror base on microstructured optical fiber

In this paper, the experiment on all-optical switching based on microstructured optical fiber (MOF) is reported. In experiment, a 25-meter-long MOF(y=36W(-1)km(-1)@1550nm) is used as nonlinear medium of nonlinear optical loop mirror and the input signal is generated by a 10GHz tunable picosecond laser source (u(2)t TMLL1550), with a full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) pulse width of 2 ps centered at 1550 nm. With the increase of input power, a pi nonlinear phase shift is obtained by 40/60 coupler in experiment, but the same thing not be found by 48/52 coupler. Strong confinement of electromagnetic radiation in the fiber core allow that microstructured optical fiber can have a much higher nonlinearity per unit length than conventional fibers, and consequently devices based on such fibers can be much shorter in length than their conventional counterparts. Additionally, the switching can also be used as reshaping devices.