ALL-OPTICAL INVERTER WITH ONE PICOJOULE SWITCHING ENERGY

An ultrafast inverter based on soliton dragging in optical fibres with a switching energy of only 1 pJ, which is the lowest switching energy of any all-optical device, is demonstrated. The inverter consists of a 30 m length of moderately birefringent fibre followed by a 2 km length of a polarisation maintaining fibre. The switching energy is lowered by separating the soliton dragging mechanisms in two different fibres and optimising the parameters in a time domain chirp switch that is based on time shift keying logic