Soliton propagation in coupled resonator optical waveguides: Application to optical delay lines

In this paper, the feasibility of realizing optical delay lines based on soliton propagation in Coupled Resonator Optical Waveguides (CROWs) is numerically analyzed. For a given bit rate and required delay, design equations are given that relate the soliton peak amplitude and collision period to the soliton width. The stability of CROW solitons, in the presence of higher order dispersion, optical loss and adjacent soliton pulses is numerically verified. It is also shown that soliton-based CROW delay lines can achieve ns delay at a propagation length of a few mm, due to the high slow down factors that can be obtained. This could open up a path towards realizing compact optical delay lines in integrated form.