Real-time and ultrafast optical pulse quantization based on slicing the supercontinuum

All-optical analog-to-digital conversion is a paramount issue in modern science. How to implement real-time and ultrafast quantization to optical pulses with different intensities in an all-optical domain is a central problem. Here, we report a real-time demonstration of an all-optical quantization scheme based on slicing the supercontinuum in a nonlinear fiber. In comparison with previous schemes through off-line analysis of the power of different optical spectral components in the supercontinuum, this, to the best of our knowledge, is the first demonstration of such functionality online in the time domain. Moreover, the extinction ratio among the quantized outputs can exceed 10 dB, which further confirms the feasibility of the proposed quantization scheme. The current 3 bit resolution in the proof-of-principle experiment is limited by the current experimental condition, but it can be expected to be greatly enhanced through improving both the spectral width of the generated supercontinuum and the number of filtering channels used.