Numerical study of soliton switching in active three-core nonlinear fiber couplers

Author

Buah, P.A. ; Rahman, B.M.A. ; Grattan, K.T.V.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Electron. & Inf. Eng., City Univ., London, UK

Volume

33

Issue

5

fYear

1997

fDate

5/1/1997 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

874

Lastpage

878

Abstract

A numerical investigation, based on the use of a finite-element-based beam propagation algorithm, of all-optical switching of solitons in three-core nonlinear fiber couplers in the presence of gain is presented. The numerical algorithm is described in detail. Linear gain is found to lead to sharper transmittance characteristics, a considerable lowering of the switching powers, and also to an increase in the power exchange between the input and center core for a nearest-neighbor core arrangement. As in the case of a two-core nonlinear fiber coupler, the finite gain bandwidth is found to lead to the deterioration of the switching characteristics

Keywords

finite element analysis; optical fibre couplers; optical solitons; optical switches; active three-core nonlinear fiber couplers; all-optical switching; finite gain bandwidth; finite-element-based beam propagation algorithm; gain; linear gain; nearest-neighbor core arrangement; numerical algorithm; power exchange; soliton switching; switching characteristics; switching powers; transmittance characteristics; two-core nonlinear fiber coupler; Bandwidth; Couplings; Finite element methods; Gain; Nonlinear equations; Optical fiber couplers; Optical fiber devices; Optical signal processing; Signal processing algorithms; Solitons;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Quantum Electronics, IEEE Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9197

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/3.572163

Filename

572163