Photonic generation of triangular pulses based on nonlinear polarization rotation in a highly nonlinear fiber

We propose a novel method to generate triangular pulses based on the nonlinear polarization rotation (NPR) effect in a highly nonlinear fiber. A continuous wave probe beam is polarization-rotated by an intensity-modulated control beam via the NPR effect. A polarization-division-multiplexing emulator is exploited to split the probe beam into two orthogonally polarized states with imbalanced time delay. After detection by a photodetector, a 90° microwave phase shifter is used to compensate the phases of the fundamental and the third-order harmonic components in order to generate triangular pulses. Triangular pulses at 5 and 6 GHz with full duty cycles are experimentally generated. The root mean square errors between the generated and the simulated waveforms are 3.6e-4 and 1e-4 for triangular pulses at 5 and 6 GHz, respectively.