Abstract

We present an application of femtosecond laser pulses that is not directly related to high speed but, rather, makes use of the large spectral bandwidth of short pulses. Conventionally, wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) systems utilize one laser for each WDM channel. For systems with many channels, the wavelength of each laser needs to be controlled and stabilized individually to assure that the emission wavelength coincides with the preassigned WDM channels. Our approach overcomes this problem by use of a single femtosecond laser source with a broadband spectrum covering all WDM channels simultaneously. Tire spectrum of the femtosecond pulse is sliced by a passive filter in order to define the WDM channels. Bach one of these WDM channels is modulated by a linear-modulator array at the repetition rate of the laser.

© 1995 Optical Society of America