Abstract
We demonstrate for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that a Sagnac interferometer can threshold the energies of pulses. Pulses below a given threshold are suppressed, while those above this threshold are normalized. The device contains an in-loop tunable isolator and 10.4 m of a highly doped silica fiber. We derive an analytical model of the nonlinear optical loop mirror’s pulse energy transfer function and show that its energy transfer function approximates a step function for very high phase shifts (). We reveal some limitations of this approach, showing that a step-function transfer function necessarily results in pulse distortion in fast, nonresonant all-optical devices.
© 2015 Optical Society of America
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