Optical NRZ-to-RZ format conversion based on frequency chirp linearization and spectrum slicing

A flexible optical NRZ-to-RZ format converter based on a time lens followed by optical filtering is proposed and demonstrated experimentally. After frequency chirp linearization, 9-tone ultra-flat optical frequency comb of 25-GHz frequency spacing within 1 dB power variation is obtained. By changing the shape of the following optical band-pass filter, 3.4-ps Nyquist-shaped RZ signal and 3.7-ps Gaussian-shaped RZ signal are both achieved. The sensitivity improvements at a bit error rate of 10−9 are 3.3 dB and 1.7 dB, respectively.