Experimental realization of transverse mode conversion using optically induced transient long-period gratings

Abstract

We present the experimental realization of transverse mode conversion in an optical fiber via an optically induced long-period grating. The transient gratings are generated by femtosecond laser pulses, exploiting the Kerr effect to translate intensity patterns emerging from multimode interference into a spatial refractive index modulation. Since these modulations exist only while the pump beam is present, they can be used for optical switching of transverse modes. As only a localized part of the grating was written at a time and the probe beam was co-propagating with the pump beam the required pulse energies could be reduced to 120\,nJ which is about a factor of 600 lower than in previous quasi-continuous-wave experiments. Accompanying numerical simulations allow a better understanding of the involved effects and show excellent agreement to the experimental results.

References in corpus (2)

• Space Division Multiplexing in Optical Fibres
• Optically induced mode conversion in graded-index fibers using ultra-short laser pulses

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• Ultrafast, low-power, all-optical switching via birefringent phase-matched transverse mode conversion in integrated waveguides
• Nonlinear dynamics in multimode optical fibers