Magneto-Optic Fiber Gratings Useful for Dynamic Dispersion Management and Tunable Comb Filtering

Intelligent control of dispersion management and tunable comb filtering in optical network applications can be performed by using magneto-optic fiber Bragg gratings (MFBGs). When a nonuniform magnetic field is applied to the MFBG with a constant grating period, the resulting grating response is equivalent to that of a conventional chirped grating. Under a linearly nonuniform magnetic field along the grating, a linear dispersion is achieved in the grating bandgap and the maximal dispersion slope can come to 1260 ps/nm² for a 10-mm-long fiber grating at 1550 nm window. Similarly, a Gaussian-apodizing sampled MFBG is also useful for magnetically tunable comb filtering, with potential application to clock recovery from return-to-zero optical signals and optical carrier tracking.