Soliton switching in an erbium-doped nonlinear fiber coupler

A numerical study of the all-optical switching properties of solitons in an erbium-doped nonlinear fiber coupler is presented. The small gain provided by the erbium both lowers and sharpens the switching threshold, while producing pulse-compression factors of 3 to 9. As a result, we show that it is possible to achieve all-optical switching, amplification, and compression of short pulses in a single device.