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All-optical bit storage in a fibre laser by optomechanically bound states of solitons

Nature Photonics volume 10, pages 454–458 (2016)Cite this article

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A Corrigendum to this article was published on 29 November 2016

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Abstract

Soliton fibre lasers mode-locked at a high harmonic of their round-trip frequency have many potential applications, from telecommunications to data storage1. Control of multiple pulses in passively mode-locked fibre lasers has, however, proved very difficult to achieve. This has recently changed with the advent of fibre lasers mode-locked by intense optomechanical interactions in a short length of photonic crystal fibre2,3. Optomechanical coupling between cavity modes gives rise to highly stable, optomechanically bound, laser soliton states. The repetition rate of these states corresponds to the mechanical resonant frequency in the photonic crystal fibre core4, which can be a few gigahertz. Here we show that this system can be successfully used for programmable generation and storage of gigahertz-rate soliton sequences over many hours.

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Figure 1: Illustrating optomechanical interactions in a several-metre-long cavity.
Figure 2: Experimental set-up.
Figure 3: Generation of a soliton sequence in the fibre laser cavity.
Figure 4: Storage of the soliton sequence for 100 h.
Figure 5: Optomechanical interactions in the PCF.

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Change history

  • 20 October 2016

    In the version of this Letter originally published, in the Acknowledgements, the name ‘G. Onishchukov’ was misspelt. This error has now been corrected in the online versions of the Letter.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank T. Roethlingshoefer and B. Stiller from the Leuchs Division at MPL for providing some components and equipment for the experiments and G. Onishchukov for comments.

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  1. Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Guenther-Scharowsky Strasse 1, Erlangen, 91058, Germany

    M. Pang, W. He, X. Jiang & P. St. J. Russell

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  1. M. Pang
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  2. W. He
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  4. P. St. J. Russell
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Contributions

The concept was proposed by M.P. and P.St.J.R., the experiments were carried out by M.P., W.H. and X.J., and the results were analysed by M.P. and W.H. The paper was written by all authors.

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Correspondence to M. Pang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Pang, M., He, W., Jiang, X. et al. All-optical bit storage in a fibre laser by optomechanically bound states of solitons. Nature Photon 10, 454–458 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2016.102

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