ULTRASHORT-PULSE PROPAGATION IN MULTIPLE-GRATING FIBER STRUCTURES

We propose a multiple-grating fiber structure that decomposes an ultra short broadband optical pulse simultaneously in both wavelength and ti me. As an initial demonstration, we used a transform-limited 1-ps Gaus sian pulse centered at 1.55 mu m as the ultrashort broadband input int o a three-grating fiber structure and generated three output pulses se parated in wavelength and time with good correlation between experimen tal results and simulations. This device structure can be used to gene rate a multiwavelength train of pulses for use in wavelength-division- multiplexed systems or to implement frequency-domain encoding of coher ent pulses for optical code-division multiple access. (C) 1997 Optical Society of America.