All-optical flip-flop contrast enhancement based on bistable polarisation rotation within Fabry–Perót SOA

Author

Ippolito, C.E. ; Paranjpe, T. ; Permeneva, D. ; Maywar, D.N.

Author_Institution

Electr., Comput., & Telecommun. Eng. Technol., Rochester Inst. of Technol., Rochester, NY, USA

Volume

50

Issue

22

fYear

2014

fDate

10 23 2014

Firstpage

1620

Lastpage

1622

Abstract

Switching-contrast enhancement of over 28 dB for all-optical flip-flop (AOFF) operation of a Fabry-Perót semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) is experimentally demonstrated. Although the two stable flip-flop states of such a device are typically distinguished by their optical power, it is demonstrated that each stable state can also exhibit a unique state of polarisation (SOP). This bistable polarisation rotation (BPR) is leveraged to achieve extreme contrast enhancement by aligning the AOFF reset-state SOP to the blocking axis of a linear polariser, producing a contrast of 36.6 dB. This contrast-enhancement technique is applicable to other AOFFs based on resonant-type SOAs (RT-SOAs) and Kerr-nonlinear media, substantially improving their applicability to advanced photonic-switching applications.

Keywords

Fabry-Perot resonators; flip-flops; optical Kerr effect; optical polarisers; optical switches; semiconductor optical amplifiers; Fabry-Perot SOA; Fabry-Perot semiconductor optical amplifier; Kerr-nonlinear media; all-optical flip-flop contrast enhancement; bistable polarisation rotation; flip-flop states; linear polariser; optical power; photonic-switching applications; polarisation state; resonant-type SOA; switching-contrast enhancement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electronics Letters

Publisher

iet

ISSN

0013-5194

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/el.2014.3002

Filename

6937253