Nonlinear space-time processing

We are investigating novel methods for harnessing ultrashort femtosecond pulses to increase the speed, provide privacy and reliability in transmission, distribution and storage of information in optical communication networks applications. To implement these features, real-time all-optical processing techniques for achieving information conversion between slower optoelectronic devices and the ultrafast pulse phenomena need to be constructed. This processing is performed for the first time in the temporal frequency domain by spatially dispersing the frequency components in a spectral processing device (SPD) and performing operations on the spectrally decomposed wave (SDW) using its unique time-domain properties. These techniques enable femtosecond rate space-to-time conversion for multiplexing parallel data streams onto an ultrahigh bandwidth serial temporal channel, and, conversely, time-to-space conversion for demultiplexing an ultrahigh bandwidth serial temporal channel onto slower parallel channels. To fulfill our goal, we utilize nonlinear wave mixing processes based on three- and four-wave mixing in a second order nonlinear crystal inside the SPD.