COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This introductory-level course provides the basic concepts of fiber-optic nonlinear optics. It is recognized that the beginning practitioner in fiber-optic communication is overwhelmed by a constellation of complicated nonlinear optical effects, including self-phase modulation, chirping, Raman amplification, self-steepening, Brillouin amplification, second-harmonic generation in fibers, optical parametric fiber amplification, 4-wave mixing, cross-phase modulation, solitons, stimulated Brillouin fiber lasers, stimulated Raman Fiber lasers, channel shifters, forward phase conjugators, and other Quasi-Phase Matched (QPM) devices.  It is our job in this course to demistify this daunting collection of seemingly unrelated effects by developing simple and clear explanations for how each works, and learning how each effect can be used for the modification, manipulation, or conversion of light pulses.  Although some mathematical formalism is provided, the emphasis is on simple explanations for how things work.

BENEFITS/LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

This course will enable you to:

•   prepare yourself to understand any nonlinear optics technical presentation.
•   understand and manipulate the Slowly-Varying Envelope Approximation (SVEA)
•   recognize what nonlinear events come into play in different effects
•   appreciate the intimate relationship between nonlinear events which at first appear quite different
•   understand how a variety of different nonlinear events arise, and how they affect the propagation of light
•   understand how wavematching, phase-matching, and index matching are related
•   understand how self-phase modulation impresses "chirping" on pulses
•   understand the role of quasi-phase matching
•   develop an appreciation for the extremely broad variety of ways in which fiber-optic communications materials exhibit nonlinear behavior.

INTENDED AUDIENCE
The material presented will be useful to engineers, scientists, students and managers who need a fundamental understanding of fiber-optic communication related nonlinear optics.

INSTRUCTOR
Robert A. Fisher  is the owner of RA Fisher Associates, and has been active in laser physics and in nonlinear optics for the last 35 years. He has taught graduate courses at the Univ. of California, Davis, and worked at both Lawrence Livermore National Lab. and Los Alamos National Lab. He is an SPIE Fellow and an OSA Fellow.  He is a member of the Board of Directors of SPIE.

Continuing Education Units (CEU's) available upon request.