Abstract

Uniform passive fiber ring cavities are a good prototype for generating pulse trains at high repetition rates via modulational instability (MI) also in the normal dispersion regime [1]. They also constitute a rich environment for fundamental studies [2]. Recently we have extended the theoretical investigation of MI to the behaviour of a passive cavity composed of dispersion oscillating optical fibers [3]. It revealed a richer and complex dynamics compared to cavities composed of standard uniform fibers. In this work, we propose to report the first experimental demonstration of MI in such a nonlinear system. More specifically, we demonstrate that a second tongue of instability is induced by the dispersion variation in the cavity.

© 2015 IEEE