The generation of high repetition-rate optical pulse train using a passively mode-locked figure-8 fiber ring laser is presented. The laser employs a novel configuration incorporating a superstructure fiber Bragg grating. Pulse train with repetition rates up to 100GHz is possible and transform-limited pulses with pulsewidth below 1ps can be achieved with chirp compensation. The output pulses can further be reduced to 83fs with an external pulse compressor.

We report tunable optical devices based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs), whose filtering characteristics are controlled by strain distributions. These devices include a widely wavelength tunable filter, a tunable group-velocity dispersion (GVD) compensator, a tunable dispersion slope (DS) compensator, and a variable-bandwidth optical add/drop multiplexer (OADM), which will play important roles for next-generation reconfigurable optical networks.