Threshold plasticity of SOI-GST microring resonators.

Spiking Neural Networks, also known as third generation Artificial Neural Networks, have widely attracted more attention because of their advantages of behaving more biologically interpretable and being more suitable for hardware implementation. Apart from using traditional synaptic plasticity, neural networks can also be based on threshold plasticity, achieving similar functionality. This can be implemented using e.g. the Bienenstock, Cooper and Munro rule. This is a classical unsupervised learning mechanism in which the threshold is closely related to the output of the post-synaptic neuron. We show in simulations that the threshold characteristics of the nonlinear effects of a microring resonator integrated with Ge2Sb2Te5 demonstrate some complex dependencies on the intracavity refractive index, attenuation, and wavelength detuning of the incident optical pulse, and exhibit class II excitability. We also show that we are able to modify the threshold power of the microring resonator by the changes of the refractive index and loss of Ge2Sb2Te5, due to transitions between the crystalline and amorphous states. Simulations show that the presented device exhibits both excitatory and inhibitory learning behavior, either lowering or raising the threshold.

Flexible optical fiber channel modeling based on a neural network module.

Optical fiber channel modeling, which is essential in optical transmission system simulations and designs, is usually based on the split-step Fourier method (SSFM), making the simulation quite time-consuming owing to the iteration steps. Here, we train a neural network module termed NNSpan to learn the transfer function of a single fiber (G652 or G655) span with a length of 80 km and successfully emulate long-haul optical transmission systems by cascading multiple NNSpans, which gives remarkable prediction accuracy, even over a transmission distance of 1000 km. Even when trained without erbium-doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) noise, NNSpan performs quite well when emulating the systems affected by EDFA noise. An optical bandpass filter can optionally be added after EDFA, making the simulation more flexible. Comparison with the SSFM shows that NNSpan has a distinct computational advantage, with the computation time reduced by a factor of 12. This method based on NNSpan could be a supplementary option for optical transmission system simulations, thus contributing to system designs as well.

Programmable low-power consumption all-optical nonlinear activation functions using a micro-ring resonator with phase-change materials.

A programmable hardware implementation of all-optical nonlinear activation functions for different scenarios and applications in all-optical neural networks is essential. We demonstrate a programmable, low-loss all-optical activation function device based on a silicon micro-ring resonator loaded with phase change materials. Four different nonlinear activation functions of Relu, ELU, Softplus and radial basis functions are implemented for incident signal light of the same wavelength. The maximum power consumption required to switch between the four different nonlinear activation functions in calculation is only 1.748 nJ. The simulation of classification of hand-written digit images also shows that they can perform well as alternative nonlinear activation functions. The device we design can serve as nonlinear units in photonic neural networks, while its nonlinear transfer function can be flexibly programmed to optimize the performance of different neuromorphic tasks.

Vector distribution measurement of PMD in optical fiber links employing a wavelength-tunable SOP-OTDR.

A measurement of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) vector distribution is implemented with a wavelength-tunable state-of-polarization-detection-based optical time domain reflectometry (SOP-OTDR). Derived from the dynamic equation between the PMD vector and the birefringence vector with a piecewise approximation method, we present an equation for piecewise expression of the relation between the two vectors based on the approximation that the second-order partial derivative of the PMD vector with respect to the length is negligible in each short-enough segment of optical fiber. Utilizing the birefringence vector distributions at three adjacent wavelengths, both the magnitude and the direction distributions of the PMD vector have been calculated through the numerical solution algorithm. The calculation results indicate that the measured magnitudes of PMD vectors are consistent with the statistical experience, which is the Maxwell probability distribution, and the second-order partial derivative magnitudes of the PMD vectors conform to the lognormal distribution. This method could provide a distributed approach for optical performance monitoring by PMD-related characteristics in optical fiber links.

Measurement of the adjustable slight roughness emulated by a spatial light modulator employing the vortex beam speckle pattern.

In this paper, we analyze the speckle patterns generated by the scattering of optical vortex on different roughness surfaces, compared with those produced by Gaussian light, where the roughness is emulated by a spatial light modulator and adjustable. The scheme and experiments demonstrate an improvement with the vortex beam, especially for slight roughness measurements. In addition, since the topological charge used to produce speckle patterns has a great influence on the speckle size and can be optimized to adjust it for different object measurements, we also investigate how the roughness depends on the topological charge.

Temperature characteristics of a BGO fiber-optic voltage transformer.

The temperature stability of the optical fiber voltage transformer (OVT) has always been the key factor restricting its practical application. There are many factors affecting temperature characteristics, including residual birefringence during Bi4Ge3O12 (BGO) processing, the thermo-optic effect, the thermal expansion effect, and temperature change of the second-order nonlinear polarization coefficient. These complex effects interact with each other and affect the temperature characteristics of the OVT. Therefore, for a long time, the research of various literatures has not been comprehensive enough, and even has certain contradictions. In this paper, the mechanism between the five influencing factors and the OVT temperature characteristics was investigated. The experimental results show that the temperature characteristics of OVT can be divided into two aspects: the starting point and the conversion coefficient. The starting point is affected by the residual birefringence of the BGO crystal, crystal alignment, the thermal expansion of the crystal, and the thermo-optic effect. The conversion coefficient is affected by the starting point, the thermo-optic effect and the second-order nonlinear polarization coefficient.

Distributed measurement of polarization mode coupling in fiber ring based on P-OTDR complete polarization state detection.

Using a quaternion method, the polarization mode-coupling coefficient can be derived from three components of the Stokes vectors at three adjacent points along a fiber. A complete polarization optical time-domain reflectometry scheme for polarization mode coupling distributed measurement in polarization-maintaining fiber ring is proposed based on the above theoretical derivations. By comparing the measurement results of two opposite incident directions and two orthogonal polarization axes of polarization-maintaining fiber rings with different lengths, the feasibility and repeatability of the measurement scheme are verified experimentally with a positioning spatial resolution of 1 meter.

Measurement of the linewidth enhancement factor based on nonlinear polarization rotation of semiconductor optical amplifier.

A simple measurement scheme of the linewidth enhancement factor based on the nonlinear polarization rotation of a semiconductor optical amplifier is proposed. Considering the polarization dependent gain, the relationship between the linewidth enhancement factor and the Stokes vector was derived theoretically. It is proven that the linewidth enhancement factor can be calculated directly from the Stokes parameters without any other assistant measurement system. The results demonstrate that the linewidth enhancement factor varies in a small range from 10.5 to 8.5 for TE mode and from 8.2 to 5.8 for TM mode, respectively, when the input optical power varies from 50 µW to 1 mW and the bias current varies from 90 to 170 mA.

Experimental investigation of all-optical nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift keying to return-to-zero DPSK format conversion based on nonlinear polarization rotation of semiconductor optical amplifier.

A novel all-optical nonreturn-to-zero differential phase-shift keying (NRZ-DPSK) to return-to-zero DPSK (RZ-DPSK) format conversion scheme is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This conversion is based on nonlinear polarization rotation of a semiconductor optical amplifier. Experimental results show that a 10 Gb/s RZ-DPSK signal with an extinction ratio over 10 dB can be converted with a tunable duty cycle from 33% to 66%, and the ER of the converted signal decreases with the increase in the duty cycle. For all cases of different duty cycles, the converted signals experience a -0.4 to -1.2 dB power penalty at a bit error rate of 10(-9) compared with the original signal. In addition, the spectra show that this format conversion is a wavelength-preserved operation.

Method to measure the second-order birefringence vector distribution along optical fibers based on high-speed polarization optical time domain reflectometry.

Based on a high-speed polarization optical domain reflectometry, an innovative method to measure the second-order birefringence vector distribution along optical fibers was proposed and implemented in this paper. Some interesting data were obtained along a 1 km long single mode fiber by only one detection. The second-order birefringence magnitude distribution curve can reflect both magnitude and direction change information of the first-order birefringence, and it was more stable (except the catastrophe points) than that of the first-order. The larger variable range of the second-order birefringence magnitude may provide a higher sensitivity than the first-order for birefringence-based distributed sensors.

Stress distribution and induced birefringence analysis for pressure vector sensing based on single mode fibers.

We propose a theoretical approach to analyze the pressure stress distribution in single mode fibers (SMFs) and achieve the analytical expression of stress function, from which we obtain the stress components with their patterns in the core and compute their induced birefringence. Then we perform a pressure vector sensing based on approximately 2 km SMF. Using Mueller matrix method we measure the birefringence vectors which are employed to compute the pressure magnitudes and their orientation. When rotating the pressure around the fiber, the corresponding birefringence vector rotates around a circle with double speed. Statistics show the average deviation of calculated pressure-magnitude to practical value is approximately 0.17 N and it is approximately 0.85 degrees for orientation.

Mode splitter based on triple-core waveguide.

The mode index and mode field of a triple-core waveguide are simulated by the compact supercell method and the FEM method. The coupling property of LP(11) mode is analyzed, for the first time to our knowledge, which is similar to that of LP(01) mode except the different coupling length. Both LP(01) and LP(11) modes can be separated based on their different coupling lengths in the waveguide. When both modes are put into the central port, they will come out on different ports by optimizing the coupler length, and the mode extinction ratio can approach 30dB.

Generalized frequency dependence of output Stokes parameters in an optical fiber system with PMD and PDL/PDG.

Dependence of output optical power, Stokes vector and degree of polarization on optical frequency is presented for an optical fiber system with both polarization mode dispersion and polarization-dependent loss or gain. The newly formulated equations are generalized for input light with arbitrary degree of polarization. The spectral resolved measurements of polarization mode dispersion using partially polarized light agree well with our theory.

[Application of correlation spectroscopy method to fiber gas sensor].

In this paper, we employ correlation spectroscopy method to detect gases and gas mixtures which have multi-line absorption in near infrared. The theories of correlation spectroscopy are discussed and a new modulation measure is proposed, which inherits the excellence of the correlation spectroscopy and makes the modulation easy. Then we compare this method with the traditional correlation spectroscopy method. Experimental results for the selective detection of methane by this method are also presented. The change in signal from interference gas is only equal to 7.4% of that from methane absorption. It has been proven that the proposed method is practicable for both theory and experiment. This method can reach a high accuracy for mixed gas detection.

All-optical differentiator and high-speed pulse generation based on cross-polarization modulation in a semiconductor optical amplifier.

We propose an all-optical intensity differentiation scheme based on cross-polarization modulation (XPolM) in a semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) while demonstrating the absolute value of differential signal that can be obtained by the SOA-based XPolM of two parts with relative delay from the input signal and well extracted by the polarization filter. The differentiation errors and eye diagrams versus sampling time Delta are investigated for data rate at 12.5 Gbits/s, and the minimal error approximately 0.06 is achieved at Delta=0. Owing to a much faster polarization response, our scheme bears great potential for all-optical signal processing over 100 Gbits/s. By application of the differentiator, we further obtain the 20 GHz short pulse train with a pulse width of approximately 10 ps.

Phenomenological model analysis for semiconductor optical amplifiers and application to time-domain digital polarization encoding.

We propose and demonstrate that semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOAs) for each wavelength of the input can be described by a lumped-elements sequence of a partly linear polarizer and a retarder followed by a polarization-independent amplifier, and further obtain two necessary conditions for the valuable orthogonal polarization rotation (OPR), which will be instructive for SOA-based all-optical signal processing. Subsequently we implement photoinduced OPR by controlling an approximately 2.5 mW pump laser and find the optimal pump wavelength should be an approximately 0.4 nm interval around the central wavelength of the probe laser. Therefore we propose a time-domain digital polarization encoding scheme based on photoinduced OPR with cross-gain modulation in a SOA and perform it well in a 15 km single-mode-fiber system at 2.5 Gbits/s, which is applicable to optical-power-equalized fiber communication.

Cascaded dynamic eigenstates of polarization analysis for piezoelectric polarization control.

We propose the cascaded dynamic eigenstates (DESs) of polarization to analyze multicomponent polarization control (PC) devices, and achieve the analytical expression of output state of polarization (SOP) as a function of voltage for piezoelectric polarization control (PPC). By measuring the DES at the output port of the device, the prestage DESs will rotate around subsequent ones. Experimental results in PPC confirm the validity of our analysis. The average error of our theoretical output SOP is 1.23 degrees, and the SOP response time is ~10 micros, which is promising to realize a quasi-open-loop high-speed PC.