Abstract

Generation of new optical frequencies in the range of 1.6 - 1.7 μm is of high interest for various applications. Developping a method based on standard erbium-fiber devices emitting in the 1.5 pm range seems an attractive cost- effective approach. Several techniques based on the non-linear effects in fibers have thus been suggested such as wavelength conversion through four-wave mixing, or the generation of cascaded Raman Stokes waves. However, those approaches suffer from serious drawbacks. In the first case, the energy is equally spread between lower and higher wavelengths, leading thus to non-optimal efficiency for the 1.6-1.7 μm range. For the Raman emission, the spectral spacing (13.2 THz) is fixed by the silica response and leads to a small number of allowed frequencies.

© 2007 IEEE