All-Optical Signal Router Based on the Interaction of Mutually Incoherent Solitons

Publication date
2001
Document type
Conference paper
Author
Herden, Christian
Wesner, Monika
Organisational unit
Universität Osnabrück
DOI
URI
ISBN
Conference
Photorefractive Effects, Materials, and Devices 2001
Series or journal
OSA trends in optics and photonics : TOPS
Part of the university bibliography
Nein
Abstract
We propose an all-optical switch and router that is based on the interaction of counterpropagating mutually incoherent spatial optical solitons. We show that such an interaction scheme of counterpropagating solitons can be used to build an all-optical switch and router that is based on attractive or repulsive forces between the light beams. A control beam is used to redirect a signal beam to one out of a set of possible output channels. The feasibility of the device is demonstrated experimentally by nonlinear collision of spatial solitons in a photorefiractive planar waveguide in strontium barium niobate. Switching speeds below one second are reached, however, by using higher intensities for the control beams, the switching time constants can be considerably decreased.

© 2001 Optical Society of America
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