Abstract:
In accordance with the invention, an optical waveguide grating with adjustable chirp comprises a waveguide grating in thermal contact with an electrically controllable heat-transducing body which varies the temperature along the length of the grating. The heat-transducing body can generate heat on the fiber or remove heat from the fiber to establish a temperature gradient along the grating. In an exemplary embodiment, the heat-transducing body is a resistive film coating whose local resistance varies along the length of the grating. Electrical current passed through the film generates a temperature gradient along the grating approximately proportional to the local resistance of the film, and the amount of chirp can be adjusted by the current. The resulting devices are simple, compact and power efficient.
Abstract:
A unique waveguide structure is provided in which the waveguide contains individual scattering elements that are capable of being tuned to provide local refractive index variations, e.g., on a micron scale - which is on the order of wavelengths typically used for communication system. According to the invention, the waveguide contains a core region (22), a cladding region (24), and a solid or liquid material (28) having the tunable scattering elements dispersed therein, where the material is disposed within the core (22) and/or cladding (24) regions, and/or on the exterior of the cladding region. Useful scattering elements include, for example, liquid crystals dispersed in a polymer (polymer-dispersed liquid crystals - PDLC) or electrophoretic particles dispersed in a liquid medium.
Abstract:
The invention involves providing a microstructured fiber having a core region, a cladding region, and one or more axially oriented elements (e.g., capillary air holes) in the cladding region. A portion of the microstructured fiber is then treated, e.g., by heating and stretching the fiber, such that at least one feature of the fiber microstructure is modified along the propagation direction, e.g., the outer diameter of the fiber gets smaller, the axially oriented elements get smaller, or the axially oriented elements collapse. The treatment is selected to provide a resultant fiber length that exhibits particular properties, e.g., mode contraction leading to soliton generation, or mode expansion. Advantageously, the overall fiber length is designed to readily couple to a standard transmission fiber, i.e., the core sizes at the ends of the length are similar to a standard fiber, which allows efficient coupling of light into the microstructured fiber length.
Abstract:
In an optical fiber communication system a pulse reshaper can transform a distorted input light pulse into a reshaped output light pulse. The disclosed pulse reshaper is an all-optical pulse reshaper that comprises an optical waveguide having an effective length, the waveguide connecting the input and the output and comprising optical non-linear material, with a periodic variation of an effective refractive index of the optical waveguide. The optically non-liner material and the periodic variation are selected such that the reshaped output light pulse is a substantially transform-limited output light pulse.
Abstract:
A method for making a chirped grating device (10) capable of a broad bandwith for optical communication systems is disclosed. An intrinsically-chirped optical grating (12) is externally strained to alter the range of chirping. The external strain may be induced by a gradient-generating body (14) bonded onto the length of the fiber grating that may be latchably strained so that the grating characteristics may be changed or tuned while avoiding use of a continuous power supply. Various optical networking applications using such dispersion compensating devices are also disclosed. The gradient may comprise a temperature gradient, a strain gradient (e.g., mechanically or magnetically-induced), or any other gradient capable of imposing an external perturbation on the fiber.
Abstract:
In accordance with the invention, an optical fiber is provided with a metal coating of controlled variable thickness by the steps of disposing the fiber in position for receiving coating metal from a metal source, and depositing metal while moving a shadow mask between the fiber and the source to provide patterning of deposited metal. Advantageously, the mask is translated at a constant velocity perpendicular to the fiber. The method is particularly useful for the fabrication of adjustable Bragg gratings.