Ultrafast all-optical switching using pulse trapping by ultrashort soliton pulse in birefringent optical fiber

Ultrafast all-optical switching by use of pulse trapping in birefringent optical fiber is demonstrated both experimentally and numerically. The wavelengths of the control soliton pulse and the trapped soliton pulse are shifted to satisfy the condition of group velocity matching. Furthermore, the energy of the trapped pulse is increased through Raman gain of the control pulse. Only a signal pulse in the pulse train with temporal separation of about 1.2 ps is successfully picked off. The repetition frequency corresponds to 0.83 THz. The spectrogram of the optical switching is directly observed using the X-FROG technique. (C) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.