All-optical regeneration of polarization of a 40 Gbit/s return-to-zero telecommunication signal

Julien Fatome (1) , Dominique Sugny (2) , Stéphane Pitois (1) , Philippe Morin (1) , Massimiliano Guasoni (1) , Antonio Picozzi (2) , Hans-Rudolf Jauslin (2) , Christophe Finot (2) , Guy Millot (1) , Stefan Wabnitz (3)

1 SLCO
2 ICB - Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Carnot de Bourgogne
3 univesité de brescia

We report all-optical regeneration of the state of polarization of a 40 Gbit/s return-to-zero telecommunication signal. The device discussed here consists of a 6.2-km-long nonzero dispersion-shifted fiber, with low polarization mode dispersion, pumped from the output end by a backward propagating wave coming from either an external continuous source or a reflection of the signal. An initially scrambled signal acquires a degree of polarization close to 100% toward the polarization generator output. All-optical regeneration is confirmed by means of polarization and bit-error-rate measurements as well as real-time observation of the eye diagrams. We show that the physical mechanism underlying the observed four-wave-mixing-based polarization attraction phenomenon can be described in terms of the geometric approach developed for the study of Hamiltonian singularities.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Julien Fatome, Dominique Sugny, Stéphane Pitois, Philippe Morin, Massimiliano Guasoni, et al.. All-optical regeneration of polarization of a 40 Gbit/s return-to-zero telecommunication signal. Photonics research, 2013, 1 (3), pp.115-123. ⟨10.1364/PRJ.1.000115⟩. ⟨hal-00864516⟩