Abstract

A highly efficient technique to generate broadband cascaded four-wave mixing (FWM) products is proposed. It consists of launching two or three strong pump waves near the zero-dispersion wavelength of very short (of order of few meters) optical fibers. Depending on the application, the fiber dispersion and nonlinear properties, as well as the pump wavelengths should be properly chosen in order to obtain the required bandwidth, uniformity and separation of the frequency comb. Experimental results present bandwidths of 300nm, spaced by 6.5nm, and more than 200 FWM products spanning over 170nm at ITU-T grid specification.

© 2008 AIP