Ultrafast soliton-trapping AND gate

An ultrafast, all-optical, soliton-trapping AND gate that consists of a birefringent optical fiber followed by a frequency filter is demonstrated. The gate is sensitive to the timing of the input pulses and provides an output with a large energy contrast. The performance of the gate is characterized by varying the total input energy, the ratio between the energies of the two input pulses, and the arrival-time difference between the input pulses. It is shown that the gate efficiency (characterized by its ON-OFF contrast ratio) increases with increasing pulse energy up to the limit where Raman effects become dominant in the fiber, and the optimal performance of the gate is obtained with two input solitons having equal energies. The gate efficiency degrades with increasing difference of arrival time of the two input pulses, but a contrast ratio of 5:1 can still be obtained for a full pulse width of timing mismatch. The experimental results are in agreement with numerical simulations using the coupled nonlinear Schrodinger equations