Abstract
In modern day low-toss single-mode fiber, the maximum information transmission rate is determined by chromatic dispersion. At most carrier wavelengths, the pulse broadening dispersion effect can be adequately described by the second- order dispersion coefficient β″ = ∂2β/∂ω2, where β is the propagation constant. One way to avoid spreading of the pulse transmitted by the fiber is to operate at the so-called zero dispersion wavelength, at which the second-order dispersion vanishes, β″ = 0. For silica fiber, this wavelength is 1.27 μm. it can be shifted to 1.55 μm to take advantage of the minimum, fiber loss of 0.2 dB/km in specially designed fiber. However, even at this wavelength, it has been shown1 that higher-order dispersion can cause significant pulse broadening. Another method to counter the dispersion, proposed by Hasegawa and Tappert,2 is to make use of the nonlinearity of the refractive index, the Kerr effect, to balance the second-order dispersion. Soliton pulses (or more precisely solitary waves) could then be generated which propagate without dispersive broadening. Recent experiments3,4 have shown the feasibility of this idea by demonstrating the propagation of solitons in the anomalous dispersion region of a single-mode silica fiber. However, whether such balance would occur between the nonlinearity and the higher-order dispersion at the zero dispersion wavelength is unclear.
© 1986 Optical Society of America
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