Double-Clad Antiresonant Hollow-Core Fiber and Its Comparison with Other Fibers for Multiphoton Micro-Endoscopy.

Label-free and multiphoton micro-endoscopy can transform clinical histopathology by providing an in situ tool for diagnostic imaging and surgical treatment in diseases such as cancer. Key to a multiphoton imaging-based micro-endoscopic device is the optical fiber, for distortion-free and efficient delivery of ultra-short laser pulses to the sample and effective signal collection. In this work, we study a new hollow-core (air-filled) double-clad anti-resonant fiber (DC-ARF) as a high-performance candidate for multiphoton micro-endoscopy. We compare the fiber characteristics of the DC-ARF with a single-clad anti-resonant fiber (SC-ARF) and a solid core fiber (SCF). In this work, while the DC-ARF and the SC-ARF enable low-loss (<0.2 dBm-1), close to dispersion-free excitation pulse delivery (<10% pulse width increase at 900 nm per 1 m fiber) without any induced non-linearities, the SCF resulted in spectral broadening and pulse-stretching (>2000% of pulse width increase at 900 nm per 1 m fiber). An ideal optical fiber endoscope needs to be several meters long and should enable both excitation and collection through the fiber. Therefore, we performed multiphoton imaging on endoscopy-compatible 1 m and 3 m lengths of fiber in the back-scattered geometry, wherein the signals were collected either directly (non-descanned detection) or through the fiber (descanned detection). Second harmonic images were collected from barium titanate crystals as well as from biological samples (mouse tail tendon). In non-descanned detection conditions, the ARFs outperformed the SCF by up to 10 times in terms of signal-to-noise ratio of images. Significantly, only the DC-ARF, due to its high numerical aperture (NA) of 0.45 and wide-collection bandwidth (>1 µm), could provide images in the de-scanned detection configuration desirable for endoscopy. Thus, our systematic characterization and comparison of different optical fibers under different image collection configurations, confirms and establishes the utility of DC-ARFs for high-performing label-free multiphoton imaging-based micro-endoscopy.

High power Raman second stokes generation in a methane filled hollow core fiber.

We demonstrate a multi-watt, picosecond pulse duration laser source by exploiting a cascaded Raman process to the second Stokes signal at a wavelength of 2.58 µm in a methane-filled Nested Anti-Resonant Nodeless fiber from a 1 µm disk laser source. A maximum average power of 2.89 W (14.45 µJ) is produced in a 160 cm length of custom-designed and in-house fabricated fiber filled with methane at a pressure of 2 bar. The impact of gas pressure and propagation distance on the second Stokes signal power are investigated experimentally. The experimental results are simulated by solving the Generalized Nonlinear Schrodinger Equation with the experiment carefully modelled by accounting for the impacts of pressure dependent gas-light interactions along the pressure gradient of the fiber. This work offers a laser source for a variety of applications as well as expanding the modelling space to methane filled fibers including pressure gradients, and nonlinear optical activity in the presence of infrared gas absorption.

Hollow core optical fibres with comparable attenuation to silica fibres between 600 and 1100 nm.

For over 50 years, pure or doped silica glass optical fibres have been an unrivalled platform for the transmission of laser light and optical data at wavelengths from the visible to the near infra-red. Rayleigh scattering, arising from frozen-in density fluctuations in the glass, fundamentally limits the minimum attenuation of these fibres and hence restricts their application, especially at shorter wavelengths. Guiding light in hollow (air) core fibres offers a potential way to overcome this insurmountable attenuation limit set by the glass's scattering, but requires reduction of all the other loss-inducing mechanisms. Here we report hollow core fibres, of nested antiresonant design, with losses comparable or lower than achievable in solid glass fibres around technologically relevant wavelengths of 660, 850, and 1060 nm. Their lower than Rayleigh scattering loss in an air-guiding structure offers the potential for advances in quantum communications, data transmission, and laser power delivery.

Nonlinear dynamic of picosecond pulse propagation in atmospheric air-filled hollow core fibers.

Atmospheric air-filled hollow core (HC) fibers, representing the simplest yet reliable form of gas-filled hollow core fiber, show remarkable nonlinear properties and have several interesting applications such as pulse compression, frequency conversion and supercontinuum generation. Although the propagation of sub-picosecond and few hundred picosecond pulses are well-studied in air-filled fibers, the nonlinear response of air to pulses with a duration of a few picoseconds has interesting features that have not yet been explored fully. Here, we experimentally and theoretically study the nonlinear propagation of ~6 ps pulses in three different types of atmospheric air-filled HC fiber. With this pulse length, we were able to explore different nonlinear characteristics of air at different power levels. Using in-house-fabricated, state-of-the-art HC photonic bandgap, HC tubular and HC Kagomé fibers, we were able to associate the origin of the initial pulse broadening process in these fibers to rotational Raman scattering (RRS) at low power levels. Due to the broadband and low loss transmission window of the HC Kagomé fiber we used, we observed the transition from initial pulse broadening (by RRS) at lower powers, through long-range frequency conversion (2330 cm-1) with the help of vibrational Raman scattering, to broadband (~700 nm) supercontinuum generation at high power levels. To model such a wide range of nonlinear processes in a unified approach, we have implemented a semi-quantum model for air into the generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equation, which surpasses the limits of the common single damping oscillator model in this pulse length regime. The model has been validated by comparison with experimental results and provides a powerful tool for the design, modeling and optimization of nonlinear processes in air-filled HC fibers.

4 × 160-Gbit/s multi-channel regeneration in a single fiber.

Simultaneous regeneration of four high-speed (160 Gbit/s) wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) and polarization-division multiplexed (PDM) signals in a single highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) is demonstrated. The regeneration operation is based on four-wave mixing in HNLF, where the degraded data signals are applied as the pump. As a result, the noise on both '0' and '1' levels can be suppressed simultaneously in our scheme. The stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) from the continuous wave (CW) is suppressed by cross-phase modulation (XPM) from the data pump, relieving the requirement of external phase modulation of the CW light. Mitigation of the inter-channel nonlinearities is achieved mainly through an inter-channel 0.5 bit slot time delay. Bidirectional propagation is also applied to relieve the inter-channel four-wave mixing. The multi-channel regeneration performance is validated by bit-error rate (BER) measurements. The receiver powers at the BER of 10(-9) are improved by 1.9 dB, 1.8 dB, 1.6 dB and 1.5 dB for the four data channels, respectively.

Parametric amplification and phase preserving amplitude regeneration of a 640 Gbit/s RZ-DPSK signal.

We report the first experimental demonstration of parametric amplification and all-optical phase-preserving amplitude regeneration for a 640 Gbit/s return-to-zero (RZ) differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) optical time division multiplexed (OTDM) signal. In the designed gain-flattened single-pump fiber optical parametric amplifier (FOPA), 620 fs short optical pulses are successfully amplified with 15 dB gain with error-free performance and less than 1 dB power penalty. Phase-preserving amplitude regeneration based on gain saturation in the FOPA is carried out for optical signals with degraded optical signal-to-noise ratio. An improvement of 2.2 dB in receiver sensitivity at a bit-error-ratio of 10(-9) has been successfully achieved after regeneration, together with 13.3 dB net gain.

Simultaneous regeneration of two 160 Gbit/s WDM channels in a single highly nonlinear fiber.

We experimentally demonstrate simultaneous all-optical regeneration of two 160-Gbit/s wavelength-division multiplexed (WDM) channels in a single highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF). The multi-channel regeneration performance is confirmed by bit-error rate (BER) measurements. The receiver powers at a BER of 10(-9) are improved by about 4.9 dB and 2.1 dB for the two channels, respectively. The BER performance is not degraded by the presence of a second channel. Mitigation of the inter-channel nonlinearities is achieved through bidirectional propagation.

Demultiplexing of OTDM-DPSK signals based on a single semiconductor optical amplifier and optical filtering.

We propose and demonstrate the use of a single semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) and optical filtering to time demultiplex tributaries from an optical time division multiplexing-differential phase shift keying (OTDM-DPSK) signal. The scheme takes advantage of the fact that phase variations added to the target channel by cross-phase modulation from the control signal are effectively subtracted in the differential demodulation scheme employed for DPSK signals. Demultiplexing from 80 to 40 Gbit/s is demonstrated with moderate power penalty using an SOA with recovery time twice as long as the bit period at 80 Gbit/s. Large dynamic ranges for the input power and SOA current are experimentally demonstrated. The scheme is expected to be scalable toward higher bit rates.

Generation of a 640 Gbit/s NRZ OTDM signal using a silicon microring resonator.

A 640 Gbit/s NRZ OTDM signal has been successfully generated for the first time by format conversion of a 640 Gbit/s OTDM signal from RZ to NRZ. First, a coherent 640 Gbit/s OTDM RZ signal is generated by wavelength conversion of the original incoherent OTDM signal utilizing Kerr switching in a highly nonlinear fiber. Second, RZ-to-NRZ format conversion is achieved in a specially designed silicon microring resonator with FSR of 1280 GHz, Q value of 638, high extinction ratio and low coupling loss to optical fiber. A 640 Gbit/s NRZ OTDM signal with very clear eye-diagram and narrower bandwidth than both the original incoherent 640 Gbit/s and the wavelength converted coherent 640 Gbit/s RZ OTDM signals has been obtained. Bit error ratio measurements show error free (<10(-9)) performance at a received power of -30 dBm for all the OTDM channels of the 640 Gbit/s NRZ signal, with very low power penalty (<0.5 dB) and improved dispersion tolerance compared to the wavelength converted RZ case.

10 GHz pulse source for 640 Gbit/s OTDM based on phase modulator and self-phase modulation.

We demonstrate a high-quality cavity-free 10 GHz 680 fs pulse source starting from a continuous wave (CW) laser. The pulse source is employed in a 640 Gbit/s on-off keying (OOK) OTDM data generation and demultiplexing experiment, where the error-free bit error rate (BER) performance confirms the high pulse quality. The pulse source is based on a linear pulse compression stage followed by two polarization-independent non-linear pulse compression stages. The linear pulse compression stage relies on a phase modulator, which is used to generate linear chirp and followed by a dispersive element to compensate the chirp. The non-linear pulse compression stages are based on self-phase modulation (SPM) in dispersion-flattened highly non-linear fibers (DF-HNLF). The pulse source is tunable over the C-band with negligible pedestal.

Ultra-high-speed optical serial-to-parallel data conversion by time-domain optical Fourier transformation in a silicon nanowire.

We demonstrate conversion from 64 × 10 Gbit/s optical time-division multiplexed (OTDM) data to dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) data with 25 GHz spacing. The conversion is achieved by time-domain optical Fourier transformation (OFT) based on four-wave mixing (FWM) in a 3.6 mm long silicon nanowire. A total of 40 out of 64 tributaries of a 64 × 10 Gbit/s OTDM-DPSK data signal are simultaneously converted with a bit-error rate (BER) performance below the 2 × 10(-3) FEC limit. Using a 50 m long highly nonlinear fiber (HNLF) for higher FWM conversion efficiency, 43 tributaries of a 64 × 10 Gbit/s OTDM-OOK data signal are converted with error-free performance (BER<10(-9)).

Synchronization, retiming and time-division multiplexing of an asynchronous 10 Gigabit NRZ Ethernet packet to terabit Ethernet.

An asynchronous 10 Gb/s Ethernet packet with maximum packet size of 1518 bytes is synchronized and retimed to a master clock with 200 kHz frequency offset using a time lens. The NRZ packet is simultaneously converted into an RZ packet, then further pulse compressed to a FWHM of 400 fs and finally time-division multiplexed with a serial 1.28 Tb/s signal including a vacant time slot, thus forming a 1.29 Tb/s time-division multiplexed serial signal. Error-free performance of synchronizing, retiming, time-division multiplexing to a Terabit data stream and finally demultiplexing back to 10 Gb/s of the Ethernet packet is achieved.

640 Gbit/s and 1.28 Tbit/s polarisation insensitive all optical wavelength conversion.

We report the first demonstration of polarisation insensitive all-optical wavelength conversion (AOWC) for single wavelength channel 640 Gbit/s return-to-zero differential-phase-shift-keying (RZ-DPSK) signal and 1.28 Tbit/s polarisation multiplexed (Pol-Mux) RZ-DPSK signals using a 100-m polarisation-maintaining highly nonlinear fiber (PM-HNLF) in a polarisation diversity loop configuration. The AOWC is based on four-wave mixing in PM-HNLF. Error free performance is achieved for the wavelength converted signals. Less than 0.5 dB polarisation sensitivity is obtained.

Demonstration of 5.1 Tbit/s data capacity on a single-wavelength channel.

We have generated a single-wavelength data signal with a data capacity of 5.1 Tbit/s. The enabling techniques to generate the data signal are optical time-division multiplexing up to a symbol rate of 1.28 Tbaud, differential quadrature phase shift keying as data format, and polarisation-multiplexing. For the first time, error-free performance with a bit error rate less than 10(-9) is demonstrated for the 5.1 Tbit/s data signal. This is achieved in a back-to-back configuration using a direct detection receiver based on polarisation- and time-demultiplexing, delay-demodulation and balanced photo-detection.