Timing jitter of Raman solitons

Abstract

We study the relative intensity noise (RIN) and timing jitter of a Raman soliton. We demonstrate that the RIN of an excitation pulse causes center-wavelength fluctuations of the resulting Raman soliton which translates by fiber dispersion into relative timing jitter (RTJ) between the Raman soliton and the excitation pulse. The Raman soliton's absolute timing jitter is dominated by the excitation pulse's timing jitter at low frequency and by the RTJ at high frequency. The experimental study reveals that RTJ can be significantly reduced by reducing the accumulated fiber dispersion (e.g., using less dispersive fibers with shorter length) experienced by the Raman soliton.