Propagation of Subpicosecond Pulses and Soliton Formation in an Optical Fiber

Abstract

For ultrashort pulses the small core of an optical single mode fiber leads to enormous peak intensities even for moderate input pulse energies. At these high intensities a multitude of optical nonlinear processes modify light transmission severely but in a very controlled way. This has led to several interesting discoveries:(i) the spectral broadening and frequency chirping of pulses which subsequently can be compressed to pulse durations of only a few femtoseconds(ii) the undisturbed propagation of pulses as optical solitons(iii) the continuous red shift of the pulse centre frequency (soliton self-frequency-shift)(iv) the disintegration of pulses into a set of fragments of soliton nature Theory and corresponding experiments to the above phenomena will be presented.