ABSTRACT
The predominantplace occupiedby optical fibers inmodernphotonic systems has steadily stimulated research to realize slow and fast light devices directly in this close-to-perfect transmission line. This potentially offers the key advantage of a seamless and flexible integration in most optical transmission systems. The main obstacle for such a realization is related to the highly disordered amorphous nature of the silica constituting the optical fibers, prohibiting the use of narrowband atomic transitions. The most efficient approach to create a narrowband gain or loss in optical fibers remains the exploitation of an optical interaction requiring a strict phase matching condition to be satisfied. This can be realized using the nonlinear optical response of the material that offers the possibility to transfer the energy from one optical wave to another lightwave. For instance, a resonant coupling over a narrow frequency range is observed in parametric interactions, which are conditioned to the generation of a third idler wave for the fulfillment of a phase matching condition. The optical wave that benefits from the energy transfer will actually experience a linear gain and therefore be subject to light slowing, while the depleted wave undergoes a linear loss and will experience a fast light effect.
