Abstract

Rare-earth-doped fiber lasers and amplifiers have attracted considerable attention in recent years in part because of their uses in fiber-optic communication systems.¹ Passive silica fiber shows minimal signal loss and anomalous dispersion around a wavelength of 1.55 µm. The minimum-loss property has made this wavelength very attractive tor long-haul communication. At the same time, the anomalous dispersion allows for optical solitons as well as a phenomenon known as modulation instability (MI). MI manifests itself through the spontaneous breakup of cw radiation into a train of ultrashort Pulses.

© 1997 Optical Society of America