| AAPPS Bulletin
Vol. 16 No. 2,
April 2006 |
Article
Progress in Ultrafast Photonics (PDF,
841KB)
Takeshi Kamiya† and
Masahiro Tsuchiya‡
† Faculty for
the Assessment and Research of Degrees, National Institution for
Academic Degrees and
University Evaluation, Japan
‡ Basic and Advanced Research Department, National
Institute of Information and Communications
Technology, Japan
Abstract
Recent progress in ultrafast photonics is reviewed with
special emphasis on the research and development activities in
Japanese research institutions in the field of optical
communication and related measurement technologies. After
summarizing the physical natures of ultrashort optical pulses,
selected topics are reviewed on such as (1) ultrahigh-bit-rate
optical communication employing the combination of optical time
division multiplexing (OTDM) and wavelength division
multiplexing (WDM), (2) optical components for ultrafast
photonics with emphasis on all optical switches including
semiconductor optical amplifiers, cascaded second order
frequency converters, semiconductor saturable absorber switches,
organic dye saturable absorber switches and bistable
semiconductor lasers, (3) microwave photonics, emphasizing
millimeterwave/photonic communication technologies, and (4)
high-speed optical measurements featuring both compact
femtosecond pulse source development and rf magnetic field
imaging. Some comments on the future prospect of ultrafast
photonics are also given. It is concluded that in order to bring
the powerful and versatile capability of ultrafast photonics
into the real world, further collaboration between photonics
specialists and production engineers/information specialists is
strongly desired. Keywords: laser, photonics, optoelectronics,
optical communication, microwave, optical measurement, nonlinear
optics, optical fiber, ultrashort pulse. |
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