Abstract

Ultrafast soliton switching using the nonlinear optical loop mirror (NOLM) has been demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally.^1,2 In addition, it has been shown that device cascading leads to an overall sharpening of the switching char acteristic.^3-5 To date, however, the effects of cascading NOLMs operating in the soliton regime have not been considered. For the first time, we experimentally demonstrate a NOLM with a multiple peaked switching characteristic and, by feeding the switched signal back through the device in a double-pass configuration, use the first two response maxima to generate an enhanced switching response. We verify that solitons switched through the cascade maintain their temporal and spectral integrity. Since the construction of all-optical switching systems requires sequences of simple devices combined to produce higher level functionality, our results further demonstrate that the NOLM is a suitable building block for more complex soliton based switching scheme.

© 1994 IEEE