Ultrafast Optical Demultiplexer Using a Spincoated Squarylium-Dye Film

Izumi IWASA  Makoto FURUKI  Minquan TIAN  Yasuhiro SATO  Satoshi TATSUURA  Osamu WADA  Lyong Sun PU 

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Electronics  Vol.E85-C  No.1  pp.167-173
Publication Date: 2002/01/01
Online ISSN: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: INVITED PAPER (Special Issue on Ultrafast Optical Signal Processing and Its Application)
Category: Ultrafast All-Optical Switching, Optical Delay and Waveform Control
Keyword: 
squarylium,  J aggregates,  optical switch,  Tbps,  femtosecond, 

Full Text: PDF

Summary: 
We fabricated ultrafast nonlinear optical films of squarylium J-aggregates and studied their properties including the absorption spectrum, the refractive index, the third-order nonlinear optical coefficients, the extent of absorption saturation, and the recovery of absorption saturation. The transmittance of the film was increased by 30% due to absorption saturation at a pump energy of several hundreds fJ/µm2/pulse. The half decay time constant of absorption saturation was found to be approximately 100 fs for off-resonant excitation. Two-dimensional demultiplexing was demonstrated using the squarylium film as a switching material. From a train of 8 optical pulses with 100 fs duration and 1 ps interval corresponding to a bit rate of 1 Tbps, 24 spatially resolved spots were obained.