Abstract

In designing high-bit-rate fiber communication systems, the transmission of solitons has been suggested after the possibility of the cancellation between dispersion and nonlinear effects was realized. Many publications on the propagation of a modulated sinusoidal wave in a single-mode fiber can be found in the literature. However, the out puts from most kinds of laser, especially from a semiconductor laser, bear finite spectral widths. The components of such a spectral distribution are usually supposed to be mutually independent and hence incoherent because of their random phases. Therefore, a pulse modulation of such a cw laser output produces a collection of many pulses with different central wavelengths corresponding to the aforementioned incoherent spectrum. In this research, we investigate the effects of this finite spectral width on nonlinear propagation in a single-mode optical fiber. To this end, the split-step technique is used to solve the wave equation governing pulse propagation. This numerical technique is iterated in those pulses with different central frequencies. Mutual interactions among those pulses can be clearly seen.

© 1987 Optical Society of America