Progress in Ultrafast Photonics

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Abstract
Recent progress in ultrafast photonics is reviewed with special emphasis on the research and development activities in Japanese research institutions in the field of optical communication and related measurement technologies. After summarizing the physical natures of ultrashort optical pulses, selected topics are reviewed on such as (1) ultrahigh-bit-rate optical communication employing the combination of optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) and wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), (2) optical components for ultrafast photonics with emphasis on all optical switches including semiconductor optical amplifiers, cascaded second order frequency converters, semiconductor saturable absorber switches, organic dye saturable absorber switches and bistable semiconductor lasers, (3) microwave photonics, emphasizing millimeter-wave/photonic communication technologies, and (4) high-speed optical measurements featuring both compact femtosecond pulse source development and rf magnetic field imaging. Some comments on the future prospect of ultrafast photonics are also given. It is concluded that in order to bring the powerful and versatile capability of ultrafast photonics into the real world, further collaboration between photonics specialists and production engineers/information specialists is strongly desired.