Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA), Institute of Photonics and Quantum Sciences, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK.
Institute of Biological Chemistry, Biophysics and Bioengineering, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK.
Nat Commun. 2017 Jan 25;8:14080. doi: 10.1038/ncomms14080.
When an optical pulse propagates along an optical fibre, different wavelengths travel at different group velocities. As a result, wavelength information is converted into arrival-time information, a process known as wavelength-to-time mapping. This phenomenon is most cleanly observed using a single-mode fibre transmission line, where spatial mode dispersion is not present, but the use of such fibres restricts possible applications. Here we demonstrate that photonic lanterns based on tapered single-mode multicore fibres provide an efficient way to couple multimode light to an array of single-photon avalanche detectors, each of which has its own time-to-digital converter for time-correlated single-photon counting. Exploiting this capability, we demonstrate the multiplexed single-mode wavelength-to-time mapping of multimode light using a multicore fibre photonic lantern with 121 single-mode cores, coupled to 121 detectors on a 32 × 32 detector array. This work paves the way to efficient multimode wavelength-to-time mapping systems with the spectral performance of single-mode systems.
当光脉冲沿着光纤传播时，不同波长以不同的群速度传播。因此，波长信息被转换为到达时间信息，这一过程称为波长到时间的映射。这种现象在使用单模光纤传输线时最为明显，因为在单模光纤传输线中不存在空间模式色散，但使用这种光纤限制了可能的应用。在这里，我们证明了基于锥形单模多芯光纤的光子灯笼为将多模光耦合到单光子雪崩探测器阵列提供了一种有效的方法，每个探测器都有自己的时间数字转换器，用于时间相关的单光子计数。利用这一功能，我们利用具有 121 个单模芯的多芯光纤光子灯笼，演示了多模光的多路复用单模波长到时间映射，该多芯光纤光子灯笼耦合到 32x32 探测器阵列上的 121 个探测器。这项工作为具有单模系统光谱性能的高效多模波长到时间映射系统铺平了道路。
