All-optical wavelength conversion based on time-domain holography

All-optical wavelength conversion of a complex (amplitude and phase) optical signal is proposed based on an all-optical implementation of time-domain holography. The temporal holograms are generated through a cross-phase modulation (XPM) process in a highly-nonlinear optical fiber, avoiding the necessity of accomplish the phase matching condition between the involved pump and probe signals, and reducing the power requirements compared to those of the traditional wavelength conversion implementations using four wave mixing (FWM). The proposed scheme also achieves symmetric conversion efficiency for up-and down-conversion. As a proof-of-concept, wavelength conversion of a train of 10 GHz chirped Gaussian-like pulses and their conjugated is experimentally demonstrated. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America