Abstract
Generation of high-quality optical pulse trains at repetition rate of tens of GHz around 1.5 μm has become increasingly interesting for many scientific applications such as optical sampling or ultrahigh capacity transmission systems. Unfortunately, the current bandwidth limitations of optoelectronic devices do not enable the direct generation of pulses with temporal width below a few ps and actively mode-locked fiber lasers were found to be an efficient, but onerous option to overcome this limitation. As an alternative issue to conventional mode-locking operation, pulse compression techniques based on Kerr nonlinearity acting in an optical fiber with anomalous dispersion have been proposed and demonstrated at a wide range of repetition rates. However, the achievement of a low-duty cycle (below 1/5) with a high quality of pulse requires the use of a multi-segment architecture [1, 2]. Here we propose to fully exploit the nonlinear evolution undergone by a sinusoidal modulation with a finite background propagating along an optical fiber. It has been theoretically shown than such an initial condition reshapes into ultrashort structures close to Akhmediev breathers or Kuznetsov-Ma solitons depending on the balance between dispersive and nonlinear effects but also on the amplitude of the initial modulation. Quite remarkably, the pulsed part of the train strongly compresses and a low-duty cycle can be achieved in a single segment of fiber. However, the non-negligible background prevents any application as efficient pulse source. Our original method to overcome this major drawback is to exploit the π phase shift that exists between the pulsed part and the background. By using a simple delay-line interferometer, it is possible to simultaneously double the repetition rate of the pulse train and to annihilate the deleterious background by imprinting a controlled π phase shift.
© 2013 IEEE
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