Abstract
We show that fiber logic gates based on soliton interactions can be shortened to less than a soliton period in length by incorporating erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFA’s) into the switches. For example, we describe an all-optical, cascadable logic gate with a fan-out of 2.7 and energy contrast of 5.5 in a soliton-period-long, moderately birefringent EDFA. We compare two configurations: a distributed amplifier, in which the solitons interact while being amplified, and a discrete amplifier, in which the pulses are amplified before interacting. Although asymmetric walk-off and rapid amplification during interaction may play a role in the distributed amplifier, the primary benefit of introducing EDFA’s appears to be the resulting high pulse intensities.
© 1994 Optical Society of America
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