High-Base Optical Signal Proccessing

Optical signal processing is a promising technique to enable fast data information processing in the optical domain. Traditional optical signal processing functions pay more attention to binary modulation formats (i.e., binary numbers) with single-bit information contained in one symbol. The ever-growing data traffic has propelled great success in high-speed optical signal transmission by using advanced multilevel modulation formats (i.e., high-base numbers), which encode multiple-bit information in one symbol with resultant enhanced transmission capacity and efficient spectrum usage. A valuable challenge would be to perform various optical signal processing functions for multilevel modulation formats, i.e., high-base optical signal processing. In this chapter, we review recent research works on high-base optical signal processing for multilevel modulation formats by exploiting degenerate and nondegenerate four-wave mixing in highly nonlinear fibers or silicon photonic devices. Grooming high-base optical signal processing functions including high-base wavelength conversion, high-base data exchange, high-base optical computing, and high-base optical coding/decoding are demonstrated. High-base optical signal processing may facilitate advanced data management and superior network performance

Application Interface Development Environment

RC 11160 (#50246) The user of interactive systems must learn a different interface for each system he uses. Furthermore the designer of such systems has limited guidelines to create good user interfaces. We describe an application interface development environment, AIDE, in which one can create and select multiple interfaces easily for a given application, and conversely one can create multiple applications with a given interface. This benefits the end-user by providing the possibility of familiar, even identical, interfaces among wide ranges of products, and this helps the designer by supporting Human Factors testing of interfaces. We formulate a model of interactive systems in which the application and interface are decoupled and the components of the interface can be changed. We also provide tools for these components and a methodology to create and sélect interfaces

Sorting photons by radial quantum number

The Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) modes constitute a complete basis set for representing the transverse structure of a {paraxial} photon field in free space. Earlier workers have shown how to construct a device for sorting a photon according to its azimuthal LG mode index, which describes the orbital angular momentum (OAM) carried by the field. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a mode sorter based on the fractional Fourier transform (FRFT) to efficiently decompose the optical field according to its radial profile. We experimentally characterize the performance of our implementation by separating individual radial modes as well as superposition states. The reported scheme can, in principle, achieve unit efficiency and thus can be suitable for applications that involve quantum states of light. This approach can be readily combined with existing OAM mode sorters to provide a complete characterization of the transverse profile of the optical field