Abstract

In single-mode fibers modulational instability (MI) occurs in the anomalous group velocity dispersion (GVD) regime. In the normal GVD regime, the growth of phase-matched sidebands may be obtained by means of a coupling mechanism between two pump waves with different wavelength^[1] or polarization.^{[2 3]} Here we consider a single-mode fiber pumped by two waves at frequency ω₀–Ω, and ω₀+Ω, respectively. In this case the interplay of dispersion and nonlinearity is responsible for the conversion from the modulationally unstable pumps into equally spaced sideband pairs at frequency ±(2k+1)Ω, where k is an integer. In this work we investigate this energy exchange process in the regime where the pump depletion plays a non-negligible role. The dynamics of the multiwave mixing process in the fiber depends on the initial detuning between the two pumps, their power and the relative phase with respect to a first contiguous sideband seed.

© 1992 IQEC