NONLINEAR OPTICAL SWITCH IN RARE-EARTH DOPED FLUORIDE GLASS

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NATIONAL FIBER OPTIC COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK HAS RECENTLY BEEN PROPOSED AS AN IMPORTANT OBJECTIVE OF OVERALL INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT IN ORDER TO MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE U.S. COMPETITIVENESS IN HIGH TECHNOLOGY. OPTICAL SWITCHING PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE FUNCTIONING OF MANY OF THE MOST ADVANCED ASPECTS OF THIS HIGH-SPEED NETWORK. RESEARCHERS ARE PRESENTING A NEW APPROACH TO OPTICALLY ACTIVATED SWITCHING BASED ON THE RESONANTLY-ENHANCED NONLINEAR OPTICAL SWITCHING IN RARE-EARTH DOPED FLUORIDE FIBERS. AN EXPECTED ORDER OF MAGNITUDE IMPROVEMENT IN PERFORMANCE OF THE FLUORIDE FIBER BASED SWITCH OVER PREVIOUS EXPERIMENTS IS BEING DEMONSTRATED. WITH THE KNOWN PROPERTIES OF DOPED FLUORIDE FIBERS, RESEARCHERS ARE ABLE TO BOTH LOWER THE REQUIRED PUMP POWER AND REDUCE THE INTERACTION LENGTH TO PRODUCE A COMPACT AND LOW POWER ALL-FIBER SWITCH.