The dynamic gain of a few-mode erbium-doped fiber amplifier (FM-EDFA) is vital for the long-haul mode division multiplexing (MDM) transmission. Here, we investigate the mode-dependent dynamic gain of an FM-EDFA under various manipulations of the pump mode. First, we numerically calculate the gain variation with respect to the input signal power, where a mode-dependent saturation input power occurs under different pump modes. Even under the fixed intensity profile of the pump laser, the saturation input power of each spatial mode is different. Moreover, high-order mode pumping leads to a compression of the linear amplification region, even though it is beneficial for the mitigation of the differential modal gain (DMG) arising in all guided modes. Then, we develop an all-fiber 3-mode EDFA, where the fundamental mode of the pump laser can be efficiently converted to the LP₁₁ mode using the all-fiber mode-selective coupler (MSC). In comparison with the traditional LP₀₁ pumping scheme, the DMG at 1550 nm can be mitigated from 1.61 dB to 0.97 dB under the LP₁₁ mode pumping, while both an average gain of 19.93 dB and a DMG of less than 1 dB can be achieved from 1530 nm to 1560 nm. However, the corresponding signal input saturation powers are reduced by 0.3 dB for the LP₀₁ mode and 1.6 dB for the LP₁₁ mode, respectively. Both theoretical and experimental results indicate that a trade-off occurs between the DMG mitigation and the extension of the linear amplification range when the intensity profile of pump laser is manipulated.

Secure distribution of high-speed digital encryption/decryption keys over a classical fiber channel is strongly pursued for realizing perfect secrecy communication systems. However, it is still challenging to achieve a secret key rate in the order of tens of gigabits per second to be comparable with the bit rate of commercial fiber-optic systems. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a novel solution for high-speed secure key distribution based on temporal steganography and private chaotic phase scrambling in the classical physical layer. The encryption key is temporally concealed into the background noise in the time domain and randomly phase scrambled bit-by-bit by a private chaotic signal, which provides two layers of enhanced security to guarantee the privacy of key distribution while providing a high secret key rate. We experimentally achieved a record classical secret key rate of 10 Gb/s with a bit error rate lower than the hard-decision forward error correction (HD-FEC) over a 40 km standard single mode fiber. The proposed solution holds great promise for achieving high-speed key distribution in the classical fiber channel by combining steganographic transmission and chaotic scrambling.

Realizing high-fidelity optical information transmission through a scattering medium is of vital importance in both science and applications, such as short-range fiber communication and optical encryption. Theoretically, an input wavefront can be reconstructed by inverting the transmission matrix of the scattering medium. However, this deterministic method for retrieving light field information encoded in the wavefront has not yet been experimentally demonstrated. Herein, we demonstrate light field information transmission through different scattering media with near-unity fidelity. Multi-dimensional optical information can be delivered through either a multimode fiber or a ground glass without relying on any averaging or approximation, where their Pearson correlation coefficients can be up to 99%.

The carrier-free phase-retrieval (CF-PR) receiver can reconstruct the optical field information only from two de-correlated intensity measurements without the involvement of a continuous-wave optical carrier. Here, we propose a digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSM)-enabled CF-PR receiver with hardware-efficient and modulation format-transparent merits. By numerically retrieving the optical field information of 56 GBaud DSM signals with QPSK/16QAM/32QAM modulation after 80-km standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) transmission, we identify that the DSM enabled CF-PR receiver is beneficial in reducing the implementation complexity of the CF-PR process, in comparison with the traditional single-carrier counterpart, because the lower symbol rate of each subcarrier is helpful in reducing the implementation complexity of multiple chromatic dispersion compensations and emulations during the PR iteration. Moreover, the DSM-enabled CF-PR receiver is verified to be robust toward various transmission imperfections, including transmitter-side laser linewidth and its wavelength drift, receiver-side time skew, and amplitude imbalance between two intensity tributaries. Finally, the superiority of the DSM-enabled CF-PR receiver is experimentally verified by recovering the optical field information of 25 GBaud 16QAM signals, after 40-km SSMF transmission for the first time. Thus, the DSM-enabled CF-PR receiver is promising for high-capacity photonic interconnection with direct detection.

Self-accelerating beams have the unusual ability to remain diffraction-free while undergo the transverse shift during the free-space propagation. We theoretically identify that the transverse optical field distribution of 2D self-accelerating beam is determined by the selection of the transverse Cartesian coordinates, when the caustic method is utilized for its trajectory design. Based on the coordinate-rotation method, we experimentally demonstrate a scheme to flexibly manipulate the rotation of transverse optical field for 2D self-accelerating beams under the condition of a designated trajectory. With this scheme, the transverse optical field can be rotated within a range of 90 degrees, especially when the trajectory of 2D self-accelerating beams needs to be maintained for free-space photonic interconnection.

Negative refraction might occur at the interface between a two-dimensional photonic crystal (PhC) slab and a homogeneous medium, where the guiding of the electromagnetic wave along the third dimension is governed by total internal reflection. Herein, we report on the observation of negative refraction in the PhC slab where the vertical guiding is enabled by a bound state in the continuum and essentially beyond the light cone. Such abnormal refraction and guiding mechanism are based on the synchronous crafting of spatial dispersion and the radiative lifetime of Bloch modes within the radiative continuum. Microwave experiments are provided to further validate the numerical proposal in an all-dielectric PhC platform. It is envisioned that the negative refraction observed beyond the light cone might facilitate the development of optical devices in integrated optics, such as couplers, multiplexers, and demultiplexers.

Fiber lasers are a paradigm of dissipative systems, which distinguish themselves from a Hamilton system where energy is conservative. Consequently, pulses generated in a fiber laser are always accompanied by the continuous wave (CW). Under certain hypothesis, pulses generated in a fiber laser can be considered as a soliton, a product of a Hamilton system. Therefore, all the descriptions of solitons of a fiber laser are approximate. Coexistence of solitons and the CW from a fiber laser prevents unveiling of real nonlinear dynamics in fiber lasers, such as soliton interactions. Pulse behavior in a fiber laser can be represented by the state of single pulse, the state of period doubling of single pulse, the states of two pulses either tightly bound or loosely distributed, the states of three pulses, and various combinations of the above-mentioned states. Recently, soliton distillation was proposed and numerically demonstrated based on the nonlinear Fourier transform (NFT) [J. Lightwave Technol.39, 2542 (2021)JLTEDG0733-872410.1109/JLT.2021.3051036]. Solitons can be separated from the coherent CW background. Therefore, it is feasible to isolate solitons from CW background in a fiber laser. Here, we applied the NFT to various pulses generated in a fiber laser, including single pulse, single pulse in period doubling, different double pulses, and multiple pulses. Furthermore, with the approach of soliton distillation, the corresponding pure solitons of those pulses are reconstructed. Simulation results suggest that the NFT can be used to identify soliton dynamics excluding CW influence in a fiber laser, which paves a new way for uncovering real soliton interaction in nonlinear systems.

Distributed optical fiber Brillouin sensors detect the temperature and strain along a fiber according to the local Brillouin frequency shift (BFS), which is usually calculated by the measured Brillouin spectrum using Lorentzian curve fitting. In addition, cross-correlation, principal component analysis, and machine learning methods have been proposed for the more efficient extraction of BFS. However, existing methods only process the Brillouin spectrum individually, ignoring the correlation in the time domain, indicating that there is still room for improvement. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a BFS extraction convolutional neural network (BFSCNN) to retrieve the distributed BFS directly from the measured two-dimensional data. Simulated ideal Brillouin spectra with various parameters are used to train the BFSCNN. Both the simulation and experimental results show that the extraction accuracy of the BFSCNN is better than that of the traditional curve fitting algorithm with a much shorter processing time. The BFSCNN has good universality and robustness and can effectively improve the performances of existing Brillouin sensors.