Breakthrough switching speed with an all-optical chalcogenide glass chip: 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing

We report the first demonstration of error-free 640 Gbit/s demultiplexing using the Kerr non-linearity of an only 5 cm long chalcogenide glass waveguide chip. Our approach exploits four-wave mixing by the instantaneous nonlinear response of chalcogenide. Excellent performance is achieved with only 2 dB average power penalty and no indication of error-floor. Characterisation of the FWM efficiency for the chalcogenide waveguide is given and confirms the good performance of the device. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America