Abstract

For optical telecommunication purposes, typically data are coded in an RZ (return to zero) format in which a logical 1 is signaled by a pulse, a logical 0 by its absence inside a time slot which is several times wider than the pulse width. Increasingly so called dispersion-managed fibers are being employed in which fibers of positive and negative dispersion are concatenated alternatingly. We demonstrated recently both numerically and experimentally that two such signal pulses can form a stable bound state at a certain close spacing on the order of the pulse width, provided they are in antiphase. This bound state has been called a soliton molecule [1], and may allow denser packing of signals and thus an increase of the data-carrying capacity of fibers.

© 2007 IEEE