Abstract

Control of nonlinear processes in optical fibers can provide the foundation for future all-optical signal processing applications which would impact a number of basic and applied fields. An ideal setting to study these phenomena is provided by microstructured optical fibers (or photonic crystal fibers –PCFs). The enhanced nonlinear effects in these structures has attracted considerable attention and has been the focus of intense research activity spanning a variety of applications [1,2]. We report here on a variety of effects which are observed experimentally by propagating 160 fs, λ=1550 nm pulses in a short segment of microstructured fiber. By operating at low average powers (up to 25 mW) and varying the input pulse polarization we can observe fundamental (N=1) soliton formation, higher order (N=2) formation in combination with a large self-frequency shift, visible harmonic generation and optical bistability in dependence of the input pulse polarization state.

© 2002 Optical Society of America