ULTRAFAST, LOW-POWER, AND HIGHLY STABLE ALL-OPTICAL SWITCHING IN AN ALL POLARIZATION MAINTAINING FIBER SAGNAC INTERFEROMETER

An ultrafast, low power, and highly stable all-optical switching in a nonlinear Sagnac interferometer is reported. To achieve low power, highly stable, and walkoff free switching, a small core area dispersion-shifted polarization maintaining fiber loop (200 m in length) which has a small group delay difference between the wavelengths of the input signal and the control pulse, was used. In addition, to achieve the complete polarization stability a wavelength-sensitive polarization maintaining fiber coupler was employed. Highly stable and walkoff free all-optical switching was successfully demonstrated at S Gb/s. © 1990 IEEE