Feature

Optical Fibers with Negative Group-Velocity Dispersion in the Visible

U. Österberg, C.P. Kuo, C.T. Seaton, and G.I. Stegeman

Optical pulse compression is one of the more powerful methods to obtain ultrashort optical pulses. For wavelengths longer than 1.3 μm, an optical pulse can be temporally compressed in an optical glass fiber due to the interplay between self-phase modulation (intensity-dependent refractive index) and negative group-velocity dispersion (GVD). For wavelengths shorter than 1.3 μm, the dispersion in the fiber is positive; hence, an external grating pair has to be employed to temporally compress the pulses. However, with the discovery of optical fiber gratings1 it is possible to obtain negative GVD for visible wavelengths.

Publish Date: 01 December 1988