Tunable dispersion and dispersion slope compensators for 10 Gb/s using all-pass multicavity etalons

We propose and demonstrate a novel approach to multi-channel tunable dispersion compensation based on multicavity etalons that can compensate all channels throughout the C or L band with either 50 GHz or 100 GHz channel spacings for 10 Gb/s applications. We demonstrate very low group delay ripple, large tuning range, as well as dispersion slope compensation for LEAF and TrueWave RS fiber across the L-band. In addition, we indicate that scaling the bandwidth for 40 Gb/s applications is readily achievable.