Cross-phase modulation (XPM) is a nonlinear optical effect where one wavelength of light can affect the phase of another wavelength of light through the optical Kerr effect. When the optical power from a wavelength impacts the refractive index, the impact of the new refractive index on another wavelength is known as XPM.
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Applications of XPM
Cross-phase modulation can be used as a technique for adding information to a light stream by modifying the phase of a coherent optical beam with another beam through interactions in an appropriate non-linear medium. This technique is applied to fiber optic communications.
XPM in DWDM applications
In DWDM applications with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM-DD) the effect of XPM is a two step process: First the signal is phase modulated by the copropagating second signal. In a second step dispersion leads to a transformation of the phase modulation into a power variation. Additionally the dispersion results in a walk-off between the channels and thereby reduces the XPM-effect.