Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T19:03:48.808Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Solitons in optical fibers: an experimental account

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2009

Get access

Summary

Introduction

In optical fibers, solitons are non-dispersive light pulses based on non-linearity of the fiber's refractive index. Such fiber solitons have already found exciting use in the precisely controlled generation of ultrashort pulses, and they promise to revolutionise telecommunications. In this chapter, I shall describe those developments, and the experimental studies they have stimulated or have helped to make possible. Thus, besides the first experimental observation of fiber solitons, I shall describe the invention of the soliton laser, the discovery of a steady down-shift in the optical frequency of the soliton, or the ‘soliton self-frequency shift’, and the experimental study of interaction forces between solitons.

As early as 1973, Hasegawa and Tappert (1973) pointed out that ‘single-mode’ fibers – fibers admitting only one transverse variation in the light fields – should be able to support stable solitons. Such fibers eliminate the problems of transverse instability and multiple group velocities from the outset, and their non-linear and dispersive characteristics are stable and well-defined. The first experiments (Mollenauer et al., 1980), however, had to wait a while, for two key developments of the late 1970s. The first was fibers having low loss in the wavelength region where solitons are possible, and the second was a suitable source of picosecond pulses, the mode-locked color center laser.

But the first experiments led almost immediately to further developments.

Type
Chapter
Information
Optical Solitons
Theory and Experiment
, pp. 30 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×