Abstract

In the normal dispersion regime, two forms of modulation instability have been observed when birefringent single mode fibres are subjected to intense pump pulses. These instabilities are the cross phase or XPMI process [1,2] and the coherent or PMI process[3,4]. In both of these processes, the generated sidebands develop at the peak of the gain, which occurs corresponds to the phase matching condition between the pump and the sidebands corrected for the optical Kerr effect. In this work we report on the development of modulation instability in birefringent fibres, using fibre winding geometries in which phase mismatches are deliberately induced. The results are in accord with theoretical predictions.

© 1996 Optical Society of America