Fonctions Optiques pour les Technologies de l’informatiON - CNRS UMR 6082

While the main advantage of optical communications is to enable transmission of ultra-high capacities by multiplexing dozens of wavelength channels operating at high bit rates, the processing of the data, for instance in view of its regeneration or routing, needs to be performed in the electrical domain, thus requiring optical-to-electrical-to-optical conversions. However, some processing functionalities could be performed more efficiently directly in the optical domain, which is known as all-optical signal processing. As new techniques exploiting the spatial dimension in multimode fibers have been proposed in order to further increase the transmitted capacity, a better understanding of nonlinear effects associated with multimode interactions is desirable.

This thesis aimed to explore paths for all-optical signal processing in mode-division multiplexing. In particular, the target was to demonstrate how nonlinear effects in multimode fibers could be used to manipulate the properties of optical signals, either in a mode independent way, or mode dependent way. Two types of fibers were designed. The first one allows to perform some all-optical signal processing functionalities for all the modes of the fiber individually and simultaneously, by using the intramodal four-wave mixing nonlinear effect. The second fiber was designed in a way to perform all-optical signal processing between different modes of the fiber, using intermodal four-wave mixing.