Simultaneous four-wave mixing and cross-absorption modulation inside a single EAM for high-speed optical demultiplexing and clock recovery

We report a novel technique that utilizes a single electroabsorption modulator (EAM) to perform simultaneous four-wave mixing (FWM) demultiplexing and all-optical timing extraction. The extracted timing, using fast cross-absorption saturation, is used to recover the subharmonic optical clock from 80-Gb/s data. Investigations of the single-pump FWM process in EAM shows a wide wavelength detuning range with almost flat FWM efficiency at large detuning. Enhancement of FWM efficiency with reverse bias of the EAM was observed.