All-fiber acousto-optic modulator based on a cladding-etched optical fiber for active mode-locking

An all-fiber acousto-optic modulator(AOM), which features a compact structure and a low-driving voltage, is experimentally demonstrated for the active mode-locking of a fiber laser. The proposed AOM is based on the short length of the cladding-etched fiber, the ends of which are fixed on a slide glass. On top of the cladding-etched fiber, a piezoelectric transducer was overlaid. A chemical wet-etching technique, which is based on a mixed solution of NH_4F and (NH_4)2SO_4, is used to reduce the fiber diameter down to ～25 μm, and the length of the etched section is only 0.5 cm. The fabricated device exhibited a modulation depth of 73.10% at an acoustic frequency of 918.9 kHz and a peak-to-peak electrical voltage of 10 V, while a laser beam was coupled at 1560 nm.By using the prepared AOM within an erbium-doped-fiber ring cavity, the mode-locked pulses with a temporalwidth of 2.66 ps were readily obtained at a repetition rate of 1.838 MHz.

Broadband all-fiber optical phase modulator based on photo-thermal effect in a gas-filled hollow-core fiber

We report broadband all-fiber optical phase modulation based on the photo-thermal effect in a gas-filled hollow-core fiber.The phase modulation dynamics are studied by multi-physics simulation.A phase modulator is fabricated using a 5.6-cm-long anti-resonant hollow-core fiber with pure acetylene filling.It has a half-wave optical power of 289 mW at 100 kHz and an average insertion loss 0.6 dB over a broad wavelength range from 1450 to 1650 nm.The rise and fall time constants are 3.5 and 3.7μs,respectively,2–3 orders of magnitude better than the previously reported microfiber-based photo-thermal phase modulators.The gas-filled hollow-core waveguide configuration is promising for optical phase modulation from ultraviolet to mid-infrared which is challenging to achieve with solid optical fibers.

Transmission Characteristic Simulation of High Frequency Acousto-Optic Modulators

The way by which one can make sure the operating mode of the modulation is by observing the Comsol results of the designed model of proposed acousto-optic modulator (AOM). These results include the pressure distribution, sound pressure distribution, stress distribution at piezoelectric, far-field analysis that describes the diffracted light orders, and electric potential versus light frequency. Throughout the simulating process of modulator operating using Comsol, it begins when the RF is power by a voltage of 100 V, the light is then split into first ordered diffraction, which implies that the modulator is in the operating mode. The use of semiconductor materials is due to its smaller gap that easily transfers the energy that leads to generating first order diffraction when they provided a voltage power. It mentioned that zero order diffraction indicates the modulator does not run;other orders are appearing with increasing the frequency of light leading to decrease of the efficiency of the modulator performance.

All-fiber optical modulator based on no-core fiber and magnetic fluid as cladding

An all-fiber optical modulator, which is composed of a piece of no-core fiber spliced between two sections of singlemode fibers and uses magnetic fluid（MF） as the cladding of the no-core fiber section, is proposed and investigated experimentally. Due to the tunable refractive index and absorption coefficient of MF, the output intensity can be modulated by controlling an applied magnetic field. The dependences of the modulator＇s temporal response on the working wavelength,the magnetic field strength（H）, and the MF＇s concentration are investigated experimentally. The results are explained qualitatively by the dynamic response process of MF under the action of a magnetic field. The findings are helpful for optimizing this kind of modulator.

Acousto-optic modulator-based bi-frequency interferometer for quantum technology

We demonstrate a high-performance acousto-optic modulator-based bi-frequency interferometer,which can realize either beating or beating free interference for a single-photon level quantum state.Visibility and optical efficiency of the interferometer are(99.5±0.2)%and(95±1)%,respectively.The phase of the interferometer is actively stabilized by using a dithering phase-locking scheme,where the phase dithering is realized by directly driving the acousto-optic modulators with a specially designed electronic signal.We further demonstrate applications of the interferometer in quantum technology,including bi-frequency coherent combination,frequency tuning,and optical switching.These results show the interferometer is a versatile device for multiple quantum technologies.

2.4Gb/s,50Km Optical Fiber Transmission Using Ti:LiNbO_3 External Modulator

2.488 Gb/s optical fiber transmission experiment using a domestic Ti.LiNbO3 externalmodulator was demonstrated for the first time in China.A receiver sensitivity of -30.3dBmwas obtained at a BER of 10-10after transmission through 50.7 km conventional single modefiber.

Magneto and Electro-Optic Intensity Modulator Based on Liquid Crystal and Magnetic Fluid Filled Photonic Crystal Fiber

We propose a novel light intensity modulator based on magnetic fluid and liquid crystal（LC） filled photonic crystal fibers（PCFs）. The influences of electric and magnetic fields on the transmission intensity are theoretically and experimentally analyzed and investigated. Both the electric and magnetic fields can manipulate the molecular arrangement of LC to array a certain angle without changing the refractive index of the LC. Therefore, light loss in the PCF varies with the electric and magnetic fields whereas the peak wavelengths remain constant. The experimental results show that the transmission intensity decreases with the increase of the electric and magnetic fields. The cut-off electric field is 0.899 V/um at 20 Hz and the cut-off magnetic field is 195 m T. This simple and compacted optical modulator will have a great prospect in sensing applications.

Wavelength injection locking actively Q-switched random fiber laser based on random phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating and electro-optic modulator

In this paper, an actively Q-switched wavelength injection locking random fiber laser(RFL) based on random phase-shifted fiber Bragg grating(RPS-FBG) is proposed, and the performance of the laser is verified by experiments. Within the reflection bandwidth range of RPS-FBG, spanning from 1 549.2 nm to 1 549.9 nm, different laser modes with stable central wavelength and peak power can be selectively chosen by varying the injected light wavelength. The power fluctuation within 1 h is less than 0.1 d Bm, and the central wavelength drift is less than 0.02 nm. When the pump power increases from 90 mW to 300 mW, the pulse width decreases from 3.2 μs to 1.5 μs, and the pulse repetition frequency is 20 kHz. The RFL can reach a stable locking state at the lowest pump power of 100 mW and the lowest injection power of 3 d Bm. When the wavelength is locked, the output pulse is a single pulse. On the contrary, the unlocked output pulse is multi-pulse. The laser has the characteristics of high wavelength tunability in the reflection range of RPS-FBG and it can be an ideal light source in the fields of laser imaging and pulse coding.

Effect of Modulation Error on All Optical Fiber Current Transformers

For actively modulated In-line Sagnac interferential all optic fiber current transformers (AOFCTs), the accuracies are directly affected by the amplitude of the modulation signal. In order to deeply undertand the function of the modulator, a theoretical model of modulation effect to AOFCTs is built up in this paper. The effect of the amplitude of the modulation signal to the output intensity of AOFCTs is theoretically formulated and numerical calculated. The results show that the modulation voltage variation could affect the output accuracies significantly. This might be some references on the investigation for practical applications of AOFCTs.

Spectral analysis of the UFBG-based acousto optical modulator in V–I transmission matrix formalism

In this study, the V-I transmission matrix formalism （V-I method） is proposed to analyze the spectrum characteristics of the uniform fiber Bragg grating （FBG）-based acousto--opfic modulators （UFBG-AOM）. The simulation results demon- strate that both the amplitude of the acoustically induced strain and the frequency of the acoustic wave （AW） have an effect on the spectrum. Additionally, the wavelength spacing between the primary reflectivity peak and the secondary reflectivity peak is proportional to the acoustic frequency with the ratio 0.1425 nm/MHz. Meanwhile, we compare the amount of calculation. For the FBG whose period is M, the calculation of the V-I method is 4 × （2M-l） in addition/subtraction, 8 × （2M - 1） in multiply/division and 2M in exponent arithmetic, which is almost a quarter of the multi-film method and transfer matrix （TM） method. The detailed analysis indicates that, compared with the conventional multi-film method and transfer matrix （TM） method, the V-I method is faster and less complex.

Broadband tunable optical amplification based on modulation instability characteristic of high-birefringence photonic crystal fibers

A novel high-birefringence photonic crystal fiber （HB-PCF） with two zero-dispersion wavelengths （ZDWs） is designed, and an extraordinarily high modal birefringence of 1.56×10-2 is obtained at pump wavelength λp=1850nm. With the designed HB-PCF, the effect of the pump parameters on the modulation instability （MI） in the anomalous dispersion region close to the second ZDWs of the HB-PCF is comprehensively studied in this work. A broadband and tunable optical amplification is achieved by controlling the pump power and the pump wavelength based on the combined operation of Raman effect and cross phase modulation. By optimizing the pump parameters, the amplification bandwidth along the fiber slow axis reaches 152 nm for the pump power Pp=280W and the pump wavelength λp=1675nm, while the gain bandwidth along the fiber fast axis is 165 nm for the pump power Pp=600W and the pump wavelength λp=1818nm.

Mathematic Model of Unsteady Penetration Mass Transfer in Randomly Packed Hollow Fiber Membrane Module

Based on the membrane-based absorption experiment of CO2 into water, shell-side flow distribution and mass transfer in a randomly packed hollow fiber module have been analyzed using subchannel model and unsteady penetration mass transfer theory. The cross section of module is subdivided into many small cells which contains only one hollow-fiber. The cross sectional area distribution of these cells is presented by the normal probability density distribution function. It has been obtained that there was a most serious non-ideal flow in shell side at moderate mean packing density, and the large amount of fluid flowed and transferred mass through a small number of large voids. Thus mass transfer process is dominated by the fluid through the larger void area. The mass transfer process in each cell is described by the unsteady penetration theory. The overall mass transfer coefficient equals to the probability addition of the mean mass transfer coefficient in each cell. The comparisons of the values calculated by the model established with the empirical correlations and the experimental data of this work have been done.The predicted overall mass transfer coefficients are in good agreement with experimental data.

A simple model of suppressing stimulated Brillouin scattering in optical fiber with frequency-modulated laser

A simple model is developed to study the mechanism of stimulated Brillouin scattering（SBS） suppression with frequency-modulated laser in optical fiber. By taking into account the laser frequency distribution along the fiber induced by frequency modulation, the average effective Brillouin gain is calculated to determine the SBS threshold. Experimental results show agreement with the numerical analysis. The application for SBS suppression in interferometric fiber sensing system is also discussed in this paper. The results show that the maximum input power can be increased effectively by frequency modulation method.

Evaluation of hollow fiber T-type zeolite membrane modules for ethanol dehydration

This work presents the design of hollow fiber T-type zeolite membrane modules with different geometric configurations. The module performances were evaluated by pervaporation dehydration of ethanol/water mixtures. Strong concentration polarization was found for the modules with big membrane bundles. The concentration polarization was enhanced at high temperature due to the higher water permeation flux. The increase of feed flow could improve water permeation flux for the membrane modules with small membrane bundle.Computational fluid dynamics was used to visualize the flow field distribution inside of the modules with different configurations. The membrane module with seven bundles exhibited highest separation efficiency due to the uniform distribution of flow rate. The packing density could be 10 times higher than that of the tubular membrane module. The hollow fiber membrane module exhibited good stability for ethanol dehydration.

Separation performance of horizontal and vertical polyethersulfone hollow fiber UF modules

The effect of hollow fiber module positions （ horizontal and vertical） on separation performance for PVA solution by using polyethersulfone （PES） hollow fiber ultrafiltration （UF） membrane with the molecular weight cut-off （MWCO） 30 000 has been discussed. Experimental results illustrated that the suitable operation conditions for PVA solution were as follows： trans-membrane pressure 2.1 bar, solution temperature 75℃ and feed velocity 0.32 m/s. Under these suitable operation conditions, the permeate flux is from 36.8 L/（m^2 ·h·bar） to 42.9 L/（m^2 ·h·bar） for the horizontal module and from 39.8 L/（m^2 ·h·bar） to 66.6 L/（m^2 ·h·bar） for the vertical module. Besides, the Separation performance of PES hollow fiber UF membrane was better by using vertical hollow fiber module than by using horizontal hollow fiber module. When the trans-membrane pressure increased from 1 bar to 2.1 bar, solution temperature from 50 ℃ to 75 ℃, feed solution velocity from 0.16 m/s to 0.32 m/s, the PVA rejection would increase from 95.8% to 99.7%, 95.4 96 to 98.6 %, 95.8 96 to 99.2 96 for horizontal module respectively, and from 98.8 96 to 99.8 %, 98.6 96 to 99.4 96, 98.5 96 to 99.4 96 for vertical module respectively. Therefore, PVA rejection in PES hollow fiber UF process was more than 98.5 96 for vertical module, and it is suitable for PVA recovery from wastewater.

Periodic Modulation of Nonlinearity in a Two-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber: A Numerical Investigation

We present a numerical investigation of the propagation and the switching of ultra-short pulses (100 fs) in a two-core nonlinear coupler of photonic crystal fibers constructed with periodically modulated the non-linearity fiber (PMNL-PFC). Our simulations are taking into account different amplitude and frequency modulations of the PMNL-PFC. A coupler for coupling whose length is Lc = 1.8 cm, the transmission characteristics, the compression factor, the crosstalk (Xtalk) and extinction ratio (Xratio) levels of the first order solitons were studied for low to high pump energies considering 2Lc. By an analysis on the reference channel (channel 2), it is observed that at low modulation frequencies an increase occurs in the switching power increasing transmission efficiency. For high modulation frequencies, the transmitted energy efficiency loses. The switching pulses are stronger for low frequency and high amplitude modulation. The Xtalk is a function of the measurement made on the secondary channel (channel 1). It was observed that this unwanted high-frequency energy increases to lessen the measure of the amplitude modulation. In summary, we have demonstrated that introduction of a non-linearity profile takes the periodically modulated PMNL-PFC to strong variations at transmission efficiency, Xtalk, Xratio a function of frequency and modulation amplitude and the input power.

Supercontinuum Generation Enhanced by Cross-phase Modulation in Dispersion-flattened and Decreasing Fiber

Supercontinuum spectrum generation in a dispersion-flattened and decreasing fiber with two orthogonally polarized pulses was simulated and calculated. The research results indicated that the supercontinuum spectrum generated by two orthogonally polarized pulses is wider and flatter than that generated by single polarized pulse due to cross-phase modulation. The cross-phase modulation effect can enhance the supercontinuum spectrum generation. When the pump power of the input pulse is lower, the enhancement of supercontinuum spectrum generation by cross-phase modulation effect is more significant.

Serrated periodic electrode for high energy efficiency and large bandwidth acousto-optic modulators

In an acousto-optic modulator,the electrode shape plays an important role in performance,since it affects the distribution of the acoustic field.The acousto-optic modulator based on the conventional rectangular electrode has the problems of low energy efficiency and small modulation bandwidth due to an imperfect acoustic field.In this paper,a new serrated periodic electrode has been proposed for using acousto-optic modulator transducers.The proposed electrode has the following advantages.By using serrated periodic electrodes to suppress the sidelobes,the collimation of the acoustic field in the direction perpendicular to the light incidence is improved.This makes the acousto-optic modulator have a stable diffraction efficiency fluctuation and high energy efficiency.In addition,the electrode has a large divergence angle in the direction of light incidence,so a large bandwidth can be obtained.The simulations and experiments demonstrate that the serrated periodic electrode has an increased bandwidth and high energy efficiency.

Modulation instabilities in randomly birefringent two-mode optical fibers

Modulation instabilities in the randomly birefringent two-mode optical fibers （RB-TMFs） are analyzed in detail by accounting the effects of the differential mode group delay （DMGD） and group velocity dispersion （GVD） ratio between the two modes, both of which are absent in the randomly birefringent single-mode optical fibers （RB-SMFs）. New MI characteristics are found in both normal and anomalous dispersion regimes. For the normal dispersion, without DMGD, no MI exists. With DMGD, a completely new MI band is generated as long as the total power is smaller than a critical total power value, named by Per, which increases significantly with the increment of DMGD, and reduces dramatically as GVD ratio and power ratio between the two modes increases. For the anomalous dispersion, there is one MI band without DMGD. In the presence of DMGD, the MI gain is reduced generally. On the other hand, there also exists a critical total power （Per）, which increases （decreases） distinctly with the increment of DMGD （GVD ratio of the two modes） but varies complicatedly with the power ratio between the two modes. Two MI bands are present for total power smaller than Per, and the dominant band can be switched between the low and high frequency bands by adjusting the power ratio between the two modes. The M1 analysis in this paper is verified by numerical simulation.

Effect of stimulated Brillouin scattering on the gain saturation of distributed fiber Raman amplifier and its suppression by phase modulation

For distributed fiber Raman amplifiers（DFRAs）, stimulated Brillouin scattering（SBS） can deplete the pump once occurring and consequently generate gain saturation. On the basis of such a theory, theoretical gain saturation powers in DFRAs with various pump schemes are obtained by calculating SBS thresholds in them, and the experimental results show that they are in excellent agreement with the calculation results. The saturation power of the DFRA with a 300 m W forward pump is as low as 0 d Bm, which needs to be enhanced by phase modulation, and the effect is quantitatively studied. A simple model taking both modulation frequency and index into consideration is presented by introducing a correction factor to evaluate the effect of phase modulation on the enhancement of saturation power. Experimentally, it is shown that such a correction factor decreases as the modulation frequency increases and approaches zero when the modulation frequency becomes high enough. In particular, a phase modulation with a modulation frequency of 100 MHz and a modulation index of 1.380 can enhance the saturation power by 4.44 d B, and the correction factor is 0.25 d B, in which the modulation frequency is high enough. Additionally, the factor is 1.767 d B for the modulation frequency of 25 MHz. On this basis,phase modulations with various indexes and a fixed frequency of 25 MHz are adopted to verify the modified model, and the results are positive. To obtain the highest gain saturation power, the model is referable. The research results provide a guide for the design of practical DFRAs.