High Repetition-Rate Similariton Generation in Normal Dispersion Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifiers and Its Application to Multi-Wavelength Light Sources

We design and demonstrate a high repetition-rate similariton generation system using normal dispersion fiber amplifiers (NDFA’s). We numerically calculate the pulse evolution in NDFA’s and clarify the condition to generate similariton pulses in a finite-length NDFA. Then we design the similariton generation system in consideration of the use of Erbium-doped fibers (EDF’s) and show that a km-long fiber amplifier with low normal dispersion can generate a high repetition-rate similariton train from practical pico-second pulse sources. In the experiment, we demonstrate a 10-GHz similariton source using a 1.2-km-long EDF. For application to multi-wavelength light sources, we measure the bit-error rate of the spectrally sliced similariton, and show that it exhibits low-noise performance, which is attributed to the spectral flatness. key words: optical fiber amplifier, self-phase modulation, similariton, spectrum broadening