Wavelength conversion and pulse reshaping through cascaded interactions in an MZI configuration

An optical wavelength converter based on second-order cascaded interactions in a waveguide is presented. The conversion mechanism relies on the combination of amplification and nonlinear dephasing of a signal field in the presence of a strong pump field at the phase-matching wavelength for second-harmonic generation. The considered scheme of the device is that of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The performance is numerically evaluated in the pulsed regime. A wide conversion bandwidth and high conversion efficiency is found. An operating regime can be found in which a significant reshaping of the output pulses, with respect to input pulses, can be observed.