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We report on the conception, fabrication and characterization of a new concept of optical fiber enabling a precise control of the ratio between the 2 nd and 4 th -order of chromatic dispersion (respectively β 2 and β 4 ) at 1.55 µm which is at the heart of the Four-Wave-Mixing (FWM) generation. For conventional highly nonlinear fiber the sensitivity of this ratio to fiber geometry fluctuations is very critical, making the fabrication process challenging. The new design fiber reconciles the accurate control of chromatic dispersion properties and fabrication by standard stack and draw method, allowing a robust and reliable method against detrimental fluctuations parameters during the fabrication process. Experimental frequency conversion with FWM in the new design fiber is demonstrated.

We report a numerical study showing how the random intensity and phase fluctuations across the bandwidth of a broadband optical super-continuum can be interpreted in terms of the random processes of random walks and Lévy flights. We also describe how the intensity fluctuations can be applied to physical random number generation. We conclude that the optical supercontinuum provides a highly versatile means of studying and generating a wide class of random processes at optical wavelengths.

We study the influence of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering on the polarization stabilization of a light beam propagating in a highly-birefringent optical fiber. In particular, due to a saturation effect, we find that the output polarization lies on a ring when the polarization is represented onto the Poincaré sphere.

We report an experimental, numerical and theoretical study of the incoherent regime of supercontinuum generation in a two zero-dispersion wavelengths fiber. By using a simple experimental setup, we show that the phenomenon of spectral broadening inherent to supercontinuum generation can be described as a thermalization process, which is characterized by an irreversible evolution of the optical field towards a thermal equilibrium state. In particular, the thermodynamic equilibrium spectrum predicted by the kinetic wave theory is characterized by a double peak structure, which has been found in quantitative agreement with the numerical simulations without adjustable parameters. We also confirm that stimulated Raman scattering leads to the generation of an incoherent structure in the normal dispersion regime which is reminiscent of a spectral incoherent soliton.

We report experimental observation and characterization of rogue wave-like extreme value statistics arising from pump-signal noise transfer in a fiber Raman amplifier. Specifically, by exploiting Raman amplification with an incoherent pump, the amplified signal is shown to develop a series of temporal intensity spikes whose peak power follows a power-law probability distribution. The results are interpreted using a numerical model of the Raman gain process using coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations, and the numerical model predicts results in good agreement with experiment.

We experimentally demonstrate the possibility to generate parabolic pulses via a single dispersion decreasing optical fiber with normal dispersion. We numerically and experimentally investigate the influence of the dispersion profile, and we show that a hybrid configuration combining dispersion decrease and gain has several benefits on the parabolic generated pulses.

We investigate the interaction between optical parabolic pulses in a Raman fiber amplifier. Self-similar amplification of two identical time-delayed pulses creates an oscillation which further evolves into a train of dark solitons through the combined effects of non-linearity, normal dispersion and adiabatic Raman gain. Theoretical predictions are in good agreement with experimental results.

Parabolic pulse generation via Raman amplification is experimentally demonstrated in 5.3 km of non-zero dispersion shifted fiber presenting normal group velocity dispersion at the injected signal pulse wavelength of 1550 nm. The fiber is pumped by a commercially-available continuous wave source at 1455 nm, and the intensity and chirp of the amplifier output are characterized using frequency-resolved optical gating. For 2.4 pJ input pulses of 10 ps duration, the output pulse characteristics are studied as a function of amplifier gain over the range 11-24 dB, allowing the evolution of the input pulse to a parabolic pulse to be clearly seen for amplifier gains exceeding 15 dB. Numerical compression of the output pulses show that near chirp-free pulses can be obtained using only linear chirp compensation.