Modulation Instability Based Fiber Interferometer Switch Near 1.5microns.

We demonstrate a Modulation Instability based Fiber Interferometer Switch (MIFIS), an ultrafast, all-optical fiber switch near 1.5microns with more than 40 dB of small signal gain (e.g. 4.4microwatt from a cw semiconductor laser gates 184mW of quasi- cw color center laser light). The large gains result from modulation instability (MI), which provides exponential growth of a perturbation until saturation because of pump depletion and the soliton self-frequency shift (SSFS). By using MI in one arm of a Mach- Zehnder interferometer, we enhance the gains since both amplitude and phase changes from MI and SSFS result in an output. Computer simulations suggest that for a cw pump as much as 74% of the pump power could be transferred to the MIFIS output.