This paper comprehensively investigates the properties of self phase modulation based optical delay systems consisting of dispersion compensation fibre and highly nonlinear fibres. It researches into the impacts of power level launched into highly nonlinear fibres, conversion wavelength, dispersion slope, modulation format and optical filter bandwidth on the overall performance of optical delay systems. The results reveal that, if the power launched into highly nonlinear fibres is fixed, the time delay generally varies linearly with the conversion wavelength, but jumps intermittently at some conversion wavelengths. However, the time delay varies semi-periodically with the power launched into highly nonlinear fibres. The dispersion slope of highly nonlinear fibres has significant influence on the time delay, especially for the negative dispersion slope. The time delay differs with modulation formats due to the different combined interaction of nonlinearity and dispersion in fibres. The bandwidth of the optical filters also greatly affects the time delay because it determines the bandwidth of the passed signal in the self phase modulation based time delay systems. The output signal quality of the overall time delay systems depends on the conversion wavelength and input power level. The optimisation of the power level and conversion wavelength to provide the best output signal quality is made at the end of this paper.
The operational parameters including the polarization controlling and the pump power in a nonlinear polarization rotation-based passively mode-locked fiber laser are studied in this paper.The carrier rate equations of the activated erbium-doped fiber are first employed together with the nonlinear Shro¨dinger equations to reveal the relation between the operational parameters and the output state of the passively mode-locked fiber laser.The numerical and experimental results demonstrate that the output state of the mode-locked laser varies with the polarization controlling and the pump power.The periodicity of the polarization controlling is observed.With given pump power,there exists a set of polarization controlling under which the ultra-short pulse can be generated.With given polarization controlling,the mode-locked state can be maintained generally except for some particular values of pump power.Three shapes of the output optical spectra from the fiber cavity can be identified when the pump power changes.The results in this paper provide a comprehensive insight into the operation of the nonlinear polarization rotation-based passively mode-locked fiber laser.
A novel design of optical sampling system has been developed by using sum-frequency generation （SFG） in a periodically-poled lithium niobate （PPLN） waveguide and using passive mode-locked fiber laser pulses as optical sampling pulses. The system achieved high temporal resolution and high sensitivity using a 30 mm length PPLN with quasi phase match period of 19.3 μm and 151 fs sampling pulses which were generated by passive modelock fiber laser based on nonlinear polarization rotation （NPR）. Clear eye-diagram of 10 Gbit/s non-return-to-zeros （NRZ） pseudorandom binary sequence （PRBS） optical signal were successfully reconstructed by this system.
The temperature dependency of a 5-mo1% MgO-doped periodically poled lithium niobate waveguide was investi- gated in this paper. We started with the temperature-dependent refractive index equation for the waveguide. Secondly, the temperature dependency of the second harmonic generation effect was experimentally researched under different temperatures and pump powers. The quasi-phase matched wavelengths, efficiency bandwidths and peak efficiencies of the waveguide were measured. The experimental results agreed with theoretical simulations, which are indispensable in the following all-optical sampling studies based on the cascaded second harmonic generation/difference-frequency generation process in the current device.
