Generation of ultrashort fundamental solitons from cw light using cross-phase modulation and Raman amplification in optical fibers

Abstract

A novel technique that can lead to the generation of ultrashort fundamental solitons from cw light is proposed. It consists of copropagating a weak cw signal with intense pump pulses in an optical fiber whose minimum-dispersion wavelength is chosen such that it falls in the middle between the pump and the signal wavelengths. The pump pulse amplifies the signal through stimulated Raman scattering and at the same time imposes cross-phase modulation on it, which eventually induces the signal to evolve into fundamental solitons. Numerical simulations show that the generated soliton can be much narrower than the pump pulse and that the repetition rate of the solitons can be higher than that of the pump pulses.