Applications of Highly-Nonlinear Chalcogenide Glass Devices Tailored for High-Speed All-Optical Signal Processing

Ultrahigh nonlinear tapered fiber and planar rib Chalcogenide waveguides have been developed to enable high-speed all-optical signal processing in compact, low-loss optical devices through the use of four-wave mixing (FWM) and cross-phase modulation (XPM) via the ultra fast Kerr effect. Tapering a commercialAs₂Se₃fiber is shown to reduce its effective core area and enhance the Kerr nonlinearity thereby enabling XPM wavelength conversion of a 40 Gb/s signal in a shorter 16-cm length device that allows a broader wavelength tuning range due to its smaller net chromatic dispersion. Progress toward photonic chip-scale devices is shown by fabricatingAs₂S₃planar rib waveguides exhibiting nonlinearity up to2080\, W⁻¹· km⁻¹and losses as low as 0.05 dB/cm. The material's high refractive index, ensuring more robust confinement of the optical mode, permits a more compact serpentine-shaped rib waveguide of 22.5 cm length on a 7-cm-size chip, which is successfully applied to broadband wavelength conversion of 40–80 Gb/s signals by XPM. A shorter 5-cm length planar waveguide proves most effective for all-optical time-division demultiplexing of a 160 Gb/s signal by FWM and analysis shows its length is near optimum for maximizing FWM in consideration of its dispersion and loss.