Abstract
We present an analysis and demonstration of the doubling of the chirp
rate and total chirp bandwidth of a frequency chirped optical signal by the
process of four-wave mixing in a non-linear optical medium. The effects of
chromatic dispersion and input power on the maximum achievable output bandwidth
are analyzed, and a dispersion compensation technique for phase matching is
described. The doubling of an input linear frequency sweep of 100 GHz/1 ms
in a highly nonlinear optical fiber is experimentally demonstrated. Further,
it is proposed that a cascaded implementation of the four-wave mixing process
leads to a geometric increase in the bandwidth of the frequency chirp. With
an electronically tuned chirped laser at the input stage, this process can
be used to generate extremely wideband swept frequency sources with no moving
parts, for applications in high-speed and high-resolution optical imaging
and spectroscopy.
© 2010 IEEE
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