Applicable ultrafast all-optical switching by soliton self-trapping in high index contrast dual-core fibre

The improvement potential of ultrafast all-optical switching by soliton self-trapping, using all-solid dual-core fibres with high index contrast, was analyzed numerically. The study of the femtosecond nonlinear propagation was performed based on coupled generalised nonlinear Schrodinger equations considering three fibre architectures: homogeneous cladding all-solid, photonic crystal air-glass, and photonic crystal all-solid. The structural geometries of all three architectures were optimised in order to support high-contrast switching performance in the C-band, considering pulse widths at the 100 fs level. Comparing the three structural alternatives, the lowest switching energies at common excitation parameters (1700 nm and 70 fs pulses) were predicted for the homogeneous cladding dual-core structure. Further optimization of the excitation wavelength and pulse width resulted in lower switching energies and simultaneous improvement of the switching contrasts at the combination of 1500 nm, 75 fs pulses and a fibre length of 43 mm. The spectral aspect in this optimised case expresses a broadband and uniform switching character with a span of over 200 nm and a contrast exceeding 30 dB at more frequency channels.