Fiber-Optical Parametric Amplifier With High-Speed Swept Pump

We experimentally demonstrate and characterize a high-speed frequency-swept pump in a fiber-optical parametric amplifier (FOPA). The high-speed swept pump is achieved with the swept rate as high as 78 MHz by a technique called dispersive Fourier transformation (DFT), which circumvents the fundamental speed limitation shown in the conventional swept-sources based on the cavity configurations. Based on such swept pump FOPA, the idler can be generated with a wavelength range twice the pump bandwidth. Such an all-optical approach offers an order-of-magnitude higher swept rate and thus lends itself to many applications such as high-speed signal processing and optical imaging.