All-optical time-domain chirp switches

We describe a novel architecture for an all-optical time-domain chirp switch in which digital logic is based on time-shift keying. This architecture is a generalization of fiber soliton-dragging logic gates that have a switching energy approaching 1 pJ. By using solitons we separate the nonlinear chirping from the time shifting and, consequently, reduce the required phase shift during the nonlinear interaction. We discuss the scaling laws for energy and latency versus pulse width and show that the chirp switches have low switching energies for high-bit-rate applications.