Polarization-independent, highly-efficient optical fiber wavelength converter

Summary form only given. An all-optical wavelength converter is one of the key devices for flexible optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. In particular, wavelength conversion based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in optical fibers is attractive because of its broadband characteristics. In order to enhance the conversion efficiency, it is the most effective to increase the pump power. However, the maximum pump power is limited by the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS). The SBS has been suppressed by frequency modulation (FM) or phase modulation (PM) of the pump light, which results in spectral spread of the converted signal. Recently, we proposed highly-efficient wavelength converters without the spectral spread by synchronized PM or FM of both pump and signal lights. However, a drawback in those converters is that they are polarization-dependent. In this paper, we propose a polarization-independent configuration using two orthogonally polarized pump lights.