Abstract

Group-velocity dispersion is a primary limitation in optically amplified system. It has been proposed¹ that optical phase conjugation (OPC) introduced in the middle of the system can be used to compensate for the dispersive broadening due to the time-reversal nature of OPC. This technique has drawn considerable attention since OPC can also cancel the effect of the Kerr nonlinearity.² In practice, the OPC is usually implemented through nondegenerate four-wave mixing (FWM) in a dispersion-shifted fiber. An ideal OPC requires this fiber to have zero dispersion to all orders. However, all fiber has high-order dispersions, and even the second-order dispersion is difficult to cancel completely at the pump frequency of FWM.

© 1995 Optical Society of America