A DURATION-TUNABLE, MULTIWAVELENGTH PULSE SOURCE FOR OTDM AND WDM COMMUNICATIONS-SYSTEMS

We describe a highly flexible ultrashort optical pulse source capable of generating duration-tunable pulses at single or multiple wavelength s. The technique we report is based on the filtering of the broad spec trum of femtosecond solitons which are generated using an electroabsor ption modulator combined with nonlinear compression. The simplicity an d robust nature of this source make it highly stable and we demonstrat e the generation of pulses at a repetition rate of 10 GHz with duratio ns in the femtosecond and picosecond regimes and the simultaneous gene ration of eight 10-GHz channels of picosecond pulses with a channel sp acing of 3.5 nm.